To the Hollow
by IceMice90
Summary: We know that Lily and James came from two very different households - one muggle and one magic - and that despite differences and adversity they fell in love. How this came to happen, however, is somewhat of a mystery in the Potter world.
1. Between the Best of Friends

**Chapter One**

_Between the Best of Friends_

The only sound on that otherwise quiet summer evening on Crockery Road was the soft humming of a fourteen-year-old boy. After a long walk to the north shore of Devon, James Potter was glad to be nearly home again. The light from what little bit of sun remained in the sky was tinged with grey from perpetual stormy clouds. A breeze whisked in from the north, chilling the already unusually cool air. James closed his eyes for a moment as he walked while the wind swept across his face and through his disheveled hair. His mind wandered aimlessly from the purpose of his ten-mile walk to the north, to hopes of what his mother would be making for dinner that night, to thoughts of his anticipated return to Hogwarts next week.

James didn't often walk; normally, he flew. He found that after a while without his usual time alone in the sky, away from the weight of life on the ground, he grew uneasy. So he was glad for the walk, as his broom had been smashed to pieces after a bad fall he took on it several weeks ago. His arm was still healing from it; it was wrapped in itchy white bandages and James was eagerly awaiting the day when he could finally take them off.

He couldn't carry much with him with his arm the way it was, but James always carried light when he went anywhere, even on long treks. It was a habit that had developed from flying, which is best done without much baggage. He had nothing with him at the moment but his wand, a muggle "cassette," he believed it was called, which Sirius had given to him for his birthday last March, and a bundle of long snake plant leaves, which he had gathered for their magical properties from a growth near the shore. The cassette jumbled around in this right pocket as he walked, a long, rubbery string extending from the devise to a large pair of earmuffs around his neck, from which music played. He was humming along to the tune of _Season of the Witch_, and was absentmindedly whacking the bundle of long leaves from side to side to the beat of the tune, kicking up dust from the dry, seldom-trodden road.

Beyond the hill that James was approaching was a small valley that cradled his family's cottage – "The Heart of Hartland," his father called it. As James ascended the hill, something in the sky caught his eye. Small, perfectly round clouds of brightly colored smoke, alternating in color from violet to indigo, green and orange, were puffing away and dissolving into the air above the treetops.

"I wonder what…" James began asking himself as he rounded the top of the hill. Sure enough, the puffs were emitting from the small metal chimney of his house in the valley. His mother must be working on quite a project in the sitting room.

As James strode up the walkway towards the front door, the bashful bluebells that his mother had planted just beyond the gate giggled and closed up their petals, reverting back into the bush. They peeked out again only when James closed the front door of the house behind him.

"Mum, I'm home," he called as soon as he entered the house, peering into the purplish haze that was wafting into the kitchen from the sitting room.

"James? Is that you, darling?" called a voice from within the haze.

"Yeah, is Dad home yet?" James called, walking towards the sitting room.

"No, he's still at the Cheswick's," his mother replied.

"Ah," said James. "Ahhhh," he repeated, upon seeing what was happening in the living room. His mother had about a hundred strips of fabric hanging all about the room, suspended in mid-air. Some of them were still white, but many of them had beautiful patterns on them in varying colors, imitating the Anatolian patterns on the quilts and glazed pottery they had around the house. The sitting room had filled up with such a foggy haze of color that with every new puff that came out of Mrs. Potter's wand, a small eruption of color would escape both through the entrance to the sitting room and up through the chimney. This meant that as James walked through the open doorway into the sitting room, he became instantly spackled with various colors.

"Oh, darling, I'm sorry – here, back up into the kitchen," Mrs. Potter said, and James obeyed, chuckling at the sight of his mother's face, which was tinged with purple, green, and orange. "Here," she said, turning her wand on him once they were out of the haze. "I've been using this spell to get the color out of the furniture – _Tinctusolvere!_"

As the color dissolved from James's face and clothing, Mrs. Potter looked him up and down and noticed the bundle stocks in her son's hand.

"What's that you've got, dear?" she asked him.

"What?" asked James. At first thinking that she was referring to the record player he had just taken out of his pocket in order to turn the music off. Realizing that she was looking at his other hand, however, he said, "Oh, just snake leaves. From Winsley Wood."

"You went all the way from the shore for those?" His mother placed a fist on her sturdy hip. "What are you up to?"

"What do you mean?" he asked innocently.

"What do I mean indeed! So, I don't suppose you know that those particular leaves have highly magical properties?" She raised an eyebrow, as if to say, _who do you think you're fooling, mister?_

"Do they?" James began, but his mother quickly responded with a playful slap on his shoulder. "Ok, ok, I…" James faltered, knowing that telling the truth would be a great breech in trust between him and his friends. So he fudged the details. "I wanted them for a potion. We're to start with more experimental potions this year and… well I'm not all that good in potions and I thought that if I made something really good–"

"Ohh, is this about that girl?" asked Mrs. Potter, still listening as she walked around him to check the stew she had going on the stovetop. "The one who always beats everyone out for top marks in potions? Is this supposed to impress her?" She cocked her head over her shoulder at him as she stirred.

"I don't know what you mean," said James quickly. His mother chuckled as she leaned over the pot to take a long whiff of the stew. She didn't answer James, but instead proceeded to add another handful of chopped onions into the mix.

"Well," she said, wiping the sticky residue of the onion juice off on her apron before picking up the wooden spoon to give the pot another stir. "I'm just glad you weren't out flying all that time. You didn't _fly_ to Winsley Wood on that old broom in the shed, did you?"

Apparently, she did believe that he was trying to impress Lily, as she had decided to drop the subject out of tact to avoid embarrassing her son. James eagerly pursued this new avenue of conversation.

"No, no, that broom is shot. I rode it to death learning to fly years ago," James reassured her.

"Mm," Mrs. Potter replied, only half-listening at this point. She would much rather talk about the girl, but James didn't seem too eager for that. "I made stuffed cabbage for you, and lentil soup. Take your pick," she said, putting the lid back on the pot and turned back to her son. "Oh, I'm just glad you weren't up in the air. Let me see." She gestured for him to give her his bandaged arm.

"Mum, I don't even have anything to ride right now," said James as his mother examined his arm. "Although I would if you hadn't locked the carpet away-" he mumbled, but stopped when she shot him a look. "Besides," he continued, "that fall was a one-time thing. I don't even remember how it happened–"

"Yes, that's the point, dear, if it was so bad that – ugh, I can't _believe_ I let you order that new broom! I _certainly _can't believe I'm still letting you play Quidditch–"

"And I love you for that, as does all of Gryffindor house, I'm sure," said James, leaning in swiftly to plant a kiss on her cheek. "I'll be upstairs. Thanks for the lentil!"

James climbed up the stairs in quick strides, snake stocks in hand. Once in his room, he tossed the stocks on the floor next to his dresser and wrote a quick note to Sirius – _Got stuff – we'll start Tuesday_ – and sent it off with Pan.

He threw himself onto his bed. He lay there on top of the crisp, cool white sheets for some time, staring up at the ceiling. The smell of the lentil came wafting into his room from under the door, and he closed his eyes, realizing only then how tired he was from the day's walk. It was nearly dusk now, and the remaining light of day coming into his room through the windows was growing dimmer by the minute. He wasn't sure if he had passed off into sleep, but when he again opened his eyes the entire room was dark, and a cool breeze had found its way into his room through the window that he had left open when he let Pan out. It was probably the chill that had awoken him, and he rose from bed at once to shut the window. Peering outside as he did this, he caught sight of a flash of gold out in the grass below. It was Shepherd chasing something – perhaps a rabbit – across the lawn, which meant that his father was back from his visit to the Cheswick's. James left his room in pursuit of his father downstairs.

"Have you guys eaten yet?" James called down the stairs as he sauntered his way down the hall. He was still a little groggy, and the house was dark. He wasn't even sure what time it was. When he heard no response he wondered for a moment if it was so late that his parents had already gone to bed. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, however, he saw a light through a crack in the door that led through to the kitchen, and heard hushed voices from within. Pushing his way through, he had to blink in order to shield his eyes from the sudden burst of light.

"'Z'it too late for lentil?" he groaned, rubbing his eyes a little with the back of his hand. When he looked up a moment later, he found his father sitting on one of the high island stools with a strange look on his face. But a moment later he forced a smile onto his lips as he cried out, with only a quarter of this usual enthusiasm, "Jimmy, there you are. All right, son?"

"Yeah, sure," said James suspiciously. He thought of asking his father the same thing, but then his mother spoke.

"I'll get you a cup, dear," she said, answering his earlier question. She turned away from the counter to fetch a bowl and taking care to make sure that James couldn't fully see her face, but it was the stuffiness in her voice that hadn't been there earlier that evening that had caught James's attention.

"Mum? Are you ok?" he asked.

"Mm? Oh, yes, dear," she said, bringing a hand to her eyes. "Just the onions."

"What onions?" James asked, looking around and finding no freshly cut Vidalias on the counter.

"I've already added them. The fumes have a way of sticking around." She put a smile on as she handed him his cup of soup.

James wanted to believe his mother for the sake of propriety, but was finding it difficult considering that he had felt a chilling tension from the moment he had walked into the room.

"How were the Cheswicks?" James asked, suspecting that whatever his parents were holding back from him had to do with his father's visit there that day.

Mr. Potter folded his hands together as he leaned forward, appearing to consider whether or not to answer the question.

"They've been better," he said, staring at a spot on the counter rather than at his son.

"Have they made any headway in getting Henry's job back?" James pressed him. Mr. Cheswick was a healer at Saint Mungo's, or he had been before he was let go after Anastas Nostrum took over as the new head of the hospital's board of directors. Mr. Potter had been on the board before his retirement six years ago, so he was still in contact with many of the hospital's staff. He was currently in the process of helping his old colleagues fight many of Nostrum's new policies, one of which had culminated in the laying off of the majority of the board's members and a large number of the healing staff.

"I'm afraid that cause is at its end, for Henry," Mr. Potter answered, and Mrs. Potter immediately began to protest his decision to indulge their sons' curiosities.

"George–"

"I know, Eed," he interrupted, "but if he doesn't hear it from us he'll be hearing it elsewhere, or in the papers if we're very unlucky."

Mrs. Potter furrowed her brow anxiously, but remained silent by way of reluctant agreement.

"What is it?" James asked.

"Henry Cheswick," his father began, but faltered. He heaved a shuddering sigh, as if his chest had suddenly deflated. "Henry Cheswick died early this morning."

Mr. and Mrs. Potter seemed to be waiting for some kind of response from their son, but James said nothing. They're just having a lot of trouble getting on their feet, that's what James had expected his father to say, that was the worst place that his mind had gone to. What his father had just said was so far removed from anything that James had imagined that he found himself unable to react to it at all. He simply stood there as if he were still waiting for his father to answer his question, all the while feeling as though his breath were slowly being taken out of him second by second.

"I don't understand you," James said, short of breath. "What – what do you…" He couldn't get the words out, and found to his surprise that it was because he was growing angry. He was angry with his father for having said something so blatantly absurd. He had just seen Henry Cheswick with his wife and two daughters last week. That can't have been the last time – it didn't make any sense. He wanted to tell his father that Henry Cheswick couldn't be dead when he had just been in their sitting room with his family five days ago, wanted to yell it out even as something cold inside him was telling him that the argument was absurd. "How do you know?" he finally asked, resolving to believe that his father could be mistaken.

"It's not been in the papers yet, for the family's sake, but he's dead," his father assured him. "Sybil hasn't told anyone outside the family, and they completely forgot I was coming today. I can't blame them."

"But I don't understand – _how?"_ pressed James, his fists in knots. "He wasn't _old_."

His father looked up at him for the first time since he had entered the kitchen.

"They said he killed himself," he answered. "From the stress of losing his job, among other things."

"No he didn't," James corrected him bluntly, feeling angrier with his father than ever.

"Well, that's the thing–"

"No, that's enough," Mrs. Potter interrupted. "There's no need to go into detail. Now, James, I know that the Cheswicks would truly appreciate it if you came to the service. It's Wednesday evening."

"Of course," he said quietly.

"I know it's a shock," she said, stepping closer to rest a hand on her son's cheek. "We'll bring them something tomorrow." He nodded. "Good. Now, do me a favor and go let Shepherd inside. I hear her barking. Take your soup."

James tactfully obeyed his mother's excuse to get him out of the kitchen so that she and her husband could talk privately. Once he had closed the kitchen door behind him, however, he stopped. An image of Mrs. Cheswick and her two daughters – alone, without their father – was burning itself into his mind. He found himself wondering who had found the body, how the girls were handling everything, if they knew the truth about how it had happened, that it was a suicide, and as he tried in vain to push the blurry image of Henry Cheswick's lifeless body out of his mind, he found himself imagining his own father there in his place. In his mind's eye he saw blood spackled on walls and hardwood floors. A horrible chill ran through him like a ghost and he wondered why on earth he would be imagining such a thing. He suddenly felt sick.

A bark from Shepherd pulled him out of his unsettling thoughts, and he strode down the back hallway to let her in. She bounded into the house and up the stairs to his room straight away. As James walked back up the hallway, he debated whether or not to go back into the kitchen. He couldn't have gone to sleep without knowing more, but his mother had made it clear that this wasn't going to happen tonight, as they had purposefully excused him so that they could continue the conversation without him. This, of course, James took as an invitation to eavesdrop. He silently thanked the carpet in the hall for muffling the sound of his footsteps as he crept up to the door, soup still in hand, and leaned his head in to listen through the crack between the door and the casing.

"-and on top of all of that, they have to _lie_ and tell everyone it was_ suicide_–" Mr. Potter was saying.

"Aurors don't often think in terms of emotion," his wife replied gravely. "Not when they have a murder to keep under wraps."

James's head jerked back in surprise, and he clutched onto his cup of soup a great deal tighter than he had been before. He suddenly felt unsteady, and turned so that his back was leaning against the wall between to the door and the small corner table in the hall.

"You weren't like that," his father was saying in reply.

"Maybe not, but when I was on the job we didn't have a Dark Rising the likes of this," she reminded him.

"No," he said. "We had Grindelwald."

Very slowly, so as not to make a sound, James placed his cup on top of the corner table beside him. He inched his head closer to the door.

"It's different this time, George," she replied, her voice collapsing slightly under the weight of this statement. "This new rising… they've learned from his mistakes. The Aurors see it, even now. They're becoming even more secretive in their methods. They're suspicious of _everyone_. I suspect that's why they want people thinking Henry's death was a suicide. The less people who know the truth, the easier it will be to keep tabs on the people who do."

"But _suicide?_ Could they have thought of anything more painful for a family to lie about?"

"You don't think the girls have been told anything that specific? They're far too young, George!"

"Ellie Cheswick's not that young. She's a year above James in school. But I've no idea. I'd like to think they know as little as possible. But if they were told anything, I'd think it'd be better if it were the truth. After all that he did and why he was killed, it would be an insult to his memory to make his own children think he'd taken his own life. They're not being spared any pain by being told a lie."

It was at that moment that James realized he was barely breathing. The lack of air was making him dizzy, and he knew his lungs would force him to gasp for air any second to make up for the loss. Praying that his footsteps would remain as quiet as they did before, he took quick, long strides to the staircase and practically flew up to the second floor. He didn't dare take in breath before he had shut his bedroom door behind him.

He didn't want to bring himself to believe it was possible. _Murder_. Here, just outside of Hartland. And the Aurors… what did the Dark Rising have to do with Henry Cheswick?

James gave a start when Shepherd grumbled from her spot in the corner of his room after he didn't move from the door for some time. He couldn't very well sleep now, so he went over to the corner and sat down by her. He ran a hand over her fine golden fur absentmindedly, staring off into a dark corner of the room. Normally the week before his return to school was one of the best of the summer, filled with gleeful anticipation and new hopes. In just one week it seemed as if his whole world had turned on its head. He didn't feel at all hopeful about the coming year. Instead, an unfamiliar anxiety had been growing in the pit of his stomach for the past week, beginning with his flying accident. Ever since that day, a heavy darkness had been hanging in the air even on the brightest of days, casting a shadow over the unforeseeable future. At times even the thought of returning to school couldn't lift his spirits. In truth, this had turned out to be the worst summer James had ever endured before his return to Hogwarts.

* * *

This had turned out to be the worst summer Lily had ever endured before her return to Hogwarts.

To begin with, Petunia had grown even more suspicious of her sister over the last year that she had reached an entirely new level of paranoia. Petunia was so suspicious of Lily using magic in the house that Lily had to be careful not to let her sister see her with so much as a wooden spoon in her hand lest it be mistaken for a wand. Mr. and Mrs. Evans sometimes made tentative attempts to repair the burned bridge between their daughters by mentioning some accomplishment of Lily's at school, but Petunia always refused to partake in any conversation that involved magic. From Petunia's point of view, her parents' constant efforts to talk about magic in the house was further evidence that they favored Lily because of her "special talent."

Usually it was Severus who made the summer holiday more bearable, but the two hadn't spoken all summer. While this had delighted Lily's parents, who weren't fond of the grubby, shifty little boy from Spinner's End, Lily had spent the summer wrought with internal torment. Recently, Severus had begun spending a lot of time with people that Lily wasn't particularly fond of. These people, in turn, were not particularly fond of Lily – or, to be more precise, people _like_ Lily. Lily couldn't help but become upset that her closest friend would want to associate with people like Walden Macnair and Calydon Crabbe. Any time Lily brought this up, however, Severus would say that he felt the same way about her associations with James Potter and his gang of Gryffindor recluses. At first, Lily thought that perhaps Severus was right, that she was being hypocritical. But when she compared her Gryffindor companions to Severus's Slytherin ones, she couldn't help but feel that her housemates were of a far better class of character than most of Severus's. This, however, she kept to herself, until an argument involving Potter – as arguments between them so often did – after Slughorn's end-of-year party had brought a lot of bottled-up feelings to light. Torn between wanting to drop the argument and wanting to find out exactly why Severus so greatly desired to be friends with such horrible people, Lily had gotten into the habit of making excuses every time Severus called the house to ask if she was free to talk. She had visited Mary MacDonald in the beginning of August just as an excuse to get out of Surrey for a while, and she hadn't seen Severus since she had returned.

This all changed three days before September first. The Evans family was sitting down to dinner together in the dining room. They didn't often do this, as Mr. Evans worked odd hours and Petunia preferred going out in the evening with her friends. But Mrs. Evans had insisted that they eat together as a family before Lily's return to school.

The only noise in the entire house came was the clinking of silverware on china plates and the sound of the game playing on the telly in the next room. When the commentator's voice became muffled under a sudden roar of screaming fans, Mr. Evans got up from the table to turn the volume up a few notches.

"Could you turn that off, dear?" asked Mrs. Evans, her jaw clenching as she tried to turn her grimace into a smile. From behind her, Lily heard her father sigh, the sound of his slippered feet shlumping their way to the TV, and a soft click followed by silence.

"Did you hear about your sister's school elections, Lily?" Mrs. Evans said as Mr. Evans lowered himself once more into his chair.

"No, I didn't. What happened?" Lily directed the question at her sister, who didn't look up from her plate when she answered.

"Petunia," Mrs. Evans coaxed cheerfully. "Tell your sister."

"I'm General Secretary," she told her roast beef.

"Oh, wow," Lily said. "Congratulations."

Petunia made no response.

"Lily's in the running for a similar position at school, isn't that right?" interjected Mrs. Evans. Lily saw Petunia's knuckles whiten as her grip on her knife tightened. "Lily, you should tell your sister about it. Petunia, you'll probably have a lot of advise for Lily, won't you?"

"I doubt my advice would be of much use to _her_," clipped Petunia.

"I'm sitting right here, you know," Lily mumbled.

"Well, you never know," Mrs. Evans said, forcing another smile on her face as she took a long sip of wine. "Are you looking forward to elections, Lily?"

"There aren't any. And I won't find out if I get a position until next summer."

"How are people appointed, then?" asked Mr. Evans, making his first contribution to the conversation for the first time since the family had sat down at the table.

"It's probably utterly medieval," muttered Petunia.

"Well," Lily said slowly as she cut into her roast. "It's not _so_ bad. You do have to joust for the position, and everyone knows it just comes down to who's got the flashiest armor, but if you kill somebody in the tournament it's pretty much a surefire win."

Noting the silence as the clinking of silverware on china suddenly stopped, Lily looked up from her plate. Her father's fork was paused midway to his slightly agape mouth, her mother's eyes were wider than she'd seen in ages, and Petunia's lips were clenched into such a tight little angry point on her face that Lily half expected her entire mouth to disappear.

"Kidding," Lily muttered, picking up her glass of water to wet the back of her dry throat.

The doorbell rang before anyone could think of something else to say.

"That's Margaret," Petunia said, rising from her seat and grabbing her purse, which she had placed at the ready next to her chair.

"Now wait a moment, we're in the middle of dinner-"

"I couldn't call her to cancel, she was already on the road," Petunia said. "Mum, please."

"No," Mrs. Evans said, placing a palm down in the table. "You're welcome to invite Margaret inside. I'm more than happy to get her a plate. But you're not going anywhere until we've finished family dinner."

"Mum, I can't do that! _She's _here!" Petunia cried, pointing a bony hand at Lily.

"What do you think I'm going to do?" Lily shot back.

"What if she does something?" Petunia whined, still refusing to speak to her sister directly.

"_What do you think I'm going to do?"_ Lily repeated.

"I am so sick of having to lie to all my friends about _her_, and not being able to have them over here because of _her_, and-"

"That's ridiculous, sweetheart, I just told you to invite her in," said Mrs. Evans.

"What am I supposed to say if she…" she glanced furiously around the dining room and waved her purse at the centerpiece. "If she turns those lemons into… into _toads_ or something-"

"Why the hell would I turn a _lemon_ into a _toad?_"

"Lily! Language!" shouted Mrs. Evans.

"I don't know _what _you get up to at that freak show!"

"Stop _calling _it that!"

"Petunia! Apologi-"

"Well what am I supposed to say?" Petunia shrieked. "I don't even know what to tell people when they ask where she goes off to during the school year. Everyone's _always_ asking and I _always_ have to _cover it up!_"

"Why do you _always _have to talk about it like it's some dirty little secret?" Lily shot back. "I remember a time when you were begging to go!"

"DON'T YOU DARE!" screamed Petunia. Angry red hives were burning their way up from her chest to her cheeks, and her eyes looks as though they might shoot fire.

"Pet, calm down. Don't make things so difficult," interjected Mr. Evans, who was the only one who hadn't stopped eating when Petunia had risen from the table. "If you have to just tell your friends what you mother and I tell ours."

"And what is that, exactly?" Lily asked, looking at her mother, who was refusing to meet Lily's eye.

"Well, Cherry, you weren't very good at making friends at your old school," Mr. Evans began, and Mrs. Evans began waving her hands at him as a signal to shut up. "The whole PTA knew it – always alone at recess and whatnot. Anyway, it made sense to just tell them we sent you somewhere else, a special school, where you could make more friends."

Just when Lily was thinking that she hadn't heard anything so unpleasant and embarrassing in her life, a sudden burst of shrill laughter from Petunia filled her ears.

"Oh, that's brilliant!" cried Petunia as she clutched her stomach. "That's way better than what I came up with! I was just telling people-"

"George, why would you – Lily! Where are you going?" Mrs. Evans called over Petunia, for Lily, not wanting to hear exactly what Petunia told her friends, had gotten up out of her seat, thrown her napkin on her plate, and strode out of the dining room towards the front door.

"Out," she barked, bashing open the front door only to find Margaret Peterson blocking her path down the steps.

"Oh, hello," Margaret said cautiously. "Is Petunia in-"

"Inside," grumbled Lily, knocking past Margaret without a second glance and storming her way down the street. She had nowhere to go, but she didn't care. She just needed to walk, and she paid no attention to where her feet were taking her, her mind too encumbered with other thoughts. She didn't stop walking until the heat in her chest subsided to a dull smolder. By this time it was growing dark. A dirty golden light was snaking across the road and up the sides of buildings, and the distant horizon was so red it looked as if the earth was bleeding. A cool breeze was coming in from the north, blowing Lily's hair in front of her eyes. She lifted her fingers to push it back and have a look around. Upturned trash cans, graphitized signposts, cheap lawn furniture and plastic toys littered the street and tiny front lawns around where she stood. She knew exactly where she was.

"Oh, hell," she groaned, cursing the number of times she had walked here over the years so that the path had implanted itself into her motor memory. Of all the places to end up at a time like this, she thought. Spinner's End. Bloody perfect.

Just as she made to turn back around, however, Lily paused. Maybe she should talk to Severus, take this as a sign that they should meet before the start of term. Yet it seemed wrong that the only reason she would go to him was because she had no one else to turn to at the moment. As cross as she was with him, she couldn't forgive herself for using him just to vent her feelings and then walk away again when nothing was resolved between them.

The sound of a storm door swinging open pulled Lily from her reverie. She turned around despite every effort her brain was making to tell her not to. Standing on the bottom stoop of one of the most depressed houses on the street was a young boy, pale, skinny, and dressed in an oversized brown t-shirt and worn jeans. Severus was staring at Lily as if he wasn't sure if she was really there, as if he thought she may have just popped out of his dreams and appeared on the sidewalk to mock him. His long, lanky black hair was pulled back in a slack ponytail, so Lily could see his eyes more clearly than usual. They were an odd mixture of sadness and wonder.

"Hi," he said softly. He raised his hand as if he were going to wave, but set it back down on the stair railing again. "I saw you from the window."

"Oh," Lily answered. What was she supposed to say now? He thought she had come here to talk to him. Now her anger towards Severus was mixed with a sense of guilt. It was as if she was teasing him, not answering his phone calls then showing up at his door.

"You look…" he started, but didn't finish the thought. "I've got scones and jam in the kitchen."

Lily couldn't stop a sad smile from appearing on her face. It had become a tradition that every time something went fabulously wrong at either the Evans or Snape households, the two would vent to each other over scones and raspberry jam. The tradition had started two years ago when Severus's father had started yet another shouting match with his mother in the kitchen. At times, Severus was truly terrified of his father's temper, so he had locked himself in his bedroom until eventually he heard the argument travel to another room in the house. All Severus had wanted to do was get out of the house, to go somewhere where there was no shouting and forget all the unhappiness. On his way out the front door through the kitchen, he spotted the trey of scones that his mum had been making before his father had come home from work. He took some, wrapped them in a cloth napkin, grabbed a jar of jam and a knife from the cupboard and was out the door. Half an hour later he was at Lily's front door with wet eyes asking if she'd like to go on a picnic. Now, standing here before her, Severus looked almost as dejected as he had been that day.

"Severus, I was…" Lily began, not sure of where to go. "I was on walk and I just-"

"I'll let you vent but, first I need to say something," interrupted Severus. For a moment Lily thought that Severus would bring up the thing with Potter at Slughorn's end-of-year party. She didn't know it, but by now the incident had grown so unpleasant in Severus's mind that he had resolved to pretend it – or at least the part involving Potter – never happened.

He took Lily's silence as consent.

"I've been an idiot," he said, taking that last step off the porch stairs and closing the gap between them slightly. Lily was struck by how articulate he sounded, almost confident, and it occurred to her that he must have gone over what he would say to her time and time again just to get it right. "I haven't been a good friend to you lately. I was a jerk last year. I know that now. I knew it then, but I was too stupid to admit it. And I understand you don't like a lot of the people I've been hanging around with," he took a deep breath, "and the truth is I'd rather be spending my time with you than with them any day of the week. This summer was a drag without you around. I don't want things to be like that between us. You're still my best friend, Lily. I don't want that to change. I-"

"Severus, _stop_," Lily said, and to both their surprise she was laughing. She had never expected him to say any of the things that had just come out of his mouth. Usually he was so stubborn and tongue-tied, and this picture of him standing here before her with his heart on his sleeve tugged on her heart so much that, torn between crying and leaping for joy, she had burst out laughing. Closing the remaining distance between them, she enveloped Severus in a tight hug, and all Severus could think was that her smile and the way she wrapped her arms wrapped around him was the most wonderful experience he'd had all summer.

"You don't have to say anything else," Lily said. "I'm just glad we're still friends."

"Always?" Severus asked softly into her hair.

"Always," said Lily, pulling away to look at him.

"I want you to know that I wanted to talk to you sooner – before we left for summer holiday, even. I just didn't know how. I thought maybe we would just get past it on our own… that was stupid."

"Stop it," Lily said with a smile. "I wish we'd done this sooner, too. And _I'm _the one who was being stupid. I shouldn't have been… Oh, I might as well say it, because we both know it's true. I was avoiding you. But it was _never _because I didn't want to be friends anymore. I was afraid things would get worse. I hate myself for that."

"Now _you_ stop," said Severus, smiling for the first time in ages. "I don't want to talk about any of that anymore, so why don't you tell me whatever it is they did this time. I can tell you're upset."

"Oh, right. You made me forget, for a moment, actually," said Lily, remembering why she had ended up at Spinners end in the first place and actually thanking her sister for sending her storming out of the house this time.

"Was _she_ at it again?" Severus asked scathingly, referring to Petunia and her anti-magic antics. "With the anti-magic rubbish?"

"Oh yeah. Wait 'til I tell you this story," Lily said, but Severus held up a hand, his black eyes bright.

"Hold on, I'll get some scones," he said, taking the porch stairs up two at a time. Lily laughed.

"I thought you were just saying that 'cuz it's our thing!" she called into the kitchen through the screen of the storm door. He emerged from the house two minutes later with a bundled up napkin in one hand and a jar in the other.

"What took you so long?" Lily teased.

"Had to find the jam," Severus told her. "I wouldn't make you try to eat these without something to sweeten it up."

Though it was true that Severus's mother wasn't the greatest in the kitchen, Lily politely shook her head in denial.

"So, what's the story?" Severus prodded as they strode up the street to the park, neither of them giving a second thought to the hour or the fact that the street lamps had just come on. Even as Lily told Severus what had happened at dinner earlier that evening, her anger about it was overtaken by the joy she felt at having her best friend back by her side.


	2. A Curious Thing

**Chapter Two**

_A Curious Thing_

The Saturday of September first brought with it the first day of sunshine that Britain had seen in weeks. While this made the journey to the station easy and enjoyable, it also meant that Platform Nine and Three Quarters was more crowded than usual, as families bidding their children farewell were more inclined to stay out in the sunshine nearby the train until it finally took off at eleven o'clock. Lily could barely see the train at all as she pushed her cart through the busy platform, her only indication of where she was going being the steady stream of white smoke already chugging out of the engine in the distance.

Severus had ridden to the station with Lily and her parents that morning. Normally, Mr. and Mrs. Evans would have protested to welcoming Severus into their car, but Lily was correct in suspecting that their guilt over what had occurred at the dinner table earlier that week would be enough to bend their wills in Lily's favor. Severus hadn't seemed too keen on the idea at first, but Lily, afraid that he suspected her parents' less than genial feelings towards Severus, had assured him that they were glad to have him for the ride.

"These are mine," Severus said, gesturing towards the row of luggage compartments lining the train for Slytherin students.

"Don't bother trying to find me out here," Lily said, scanning the packed platform. "Meet me in car five. We can find a seat from there."

"See you in a bit," said Severus, who was already beginning to take the trunk off of his cart.

Seconds later, Lily was swallowed up by the crowd in search of a luggage compartment of her own. She had only just reached her own luggage compartment when she thought she spotted a flash of dirty blonde hair and heard the familiar tinkling laughter of Denise Adlard farther up the platform. Craning her neck over the crowd, Lily tugged on her cart to speed up in pursuit of her friend. She hadn't gone more than five paces when a jarring _CRASH!_ erupted to her right as a trunk collided with cement, where it burst open, sending books, papers and an assortment of quills spilling out onto the platform. Someone nearby let lose a colorful curse, and Lily yelped in surprise as she leapt backwards, her backside colliding with her cart. She flapped her arms out by her sides, and just when she though she was about to topple over an arm swept behind her back to steady her.

"Bloody hell!" shouted the boy who was holding her up. "You alright?"

"What on _earth_, Potter?" was Lily's reply, having just barely seen who it was that had collided with her out of the corner of her eye.

"Sorry. You all right?" he repeated.

"Yes, I'm fine, so you can let go of me, now," she said, as James still had his left arm wrapped around her back. Lily looked around herself to see if she had dropped anything in the collision. She was quickly satisfied and lifted her gaze to finally give James a nice stern look.

But she faltered, finding herself momentarily distracted when her bright emerald eyes met his dark hazel ones. He was taller – that was what Lily noticed first, because she was struck by the few extra inches by which she needed to lift her gaze to see his face. His hair was even more disheveled than usual, as if he'd just been running his hands through it in frustration.

James momentarily lost himself in the sight of Lily before he could answer – how her deep red hair was now sun bleached a few shades lighter, and a bit shorter, so that the ends feathered over her shoulders and around her face–

He was quickly jolted out of his reverie when he noticed the perplexed look on Lily's face and realized that he still had his arm around her.

"Oh, right, sure," stammered James. He released her.

"Are _you_ all right?" she asked, changing her tone now that she had had a good look at him. She had never before seen this normally savvy boy quite so flustered. For reasons she couldn't explain, this made her insides swell up with something like affection.

"Fine," he heaved exasperatedly, looking around rather hopelessly at all his scattered things before turning back to Lily. "Just bloody brilliant. Sorry about that–"

"Merlin, Potter, are you blind?" someone called.

Tony Marsden, a Gryffindor third year who had an annoying habit of showing up at the worst of times, had arrived to put in his two cents.

"Sod off, Tony," said James, rolling his eyes.

"What's with your arm?" Tony said, ignoring James's comment.

"None of your business," James replied. He took out his wand and waved it so that all the scattered papers and books flew up into the air and stacked themselves neatly into his trunk once more.

"You're not supposed to use magic until we're back at Hogwarts," reprimanded Tony.

James's only response was a look of annoyance as he proceeded to magically float his trunk into the luggage compartment.

"Now why didn't I just do that in the first place?" he asked, more to himself than to anyone else.

"Can you fly with it like that?" Tony asked, returning his attention back to James's bandaged arm. "I just saw Martha. She told me she's holding tryouts early this year. If you're not careful you'll be downgraded to an alternate."

"Sod _off_, Tony," repeated James.

"Just saying," said Tony. "See you, Evans," he added, nodding at Lily before climbing up into the nearest car.

"Bye," Lily said with a little wave. "I thought you two were friends," she said to James once Marsden was out of earshot.

"Where'd you get that?" asked James with a look of mild disgust.

"You two _are_ on the same Quidditch team," she said.

"Doesn't mean I have to like him," said James. "Little git. Anyway, are you sure you're alright?"

"Oh, yeah, I'm fine," Lily assured him. "Um, listen, I'm actually glad we bumped into each other. Not literally, I mean – er – it occurred to me after term ended that," Lily faltered, but quickly decided to just come right out with it. "That it might have seemed like I was avoiding you."

"Really? How's that?" asked James, furrowing his brow slightly as he cocked his head to the side.

"Oh, I don't know," said Lily, taken aback. "I mean I _wasn't._" She was. "It's no big deal." It was – she could feel herself growing a bit warm under the collar. "It's just that I never got a chance to ask you how things worked out after Slughorn's party, and I didn't want you to think I was – I don't know–"

"Avoiding me?" echoed James. "No. I didn't notice, actually. And I wouldn't have given you any details anyway. You know that." He ended with a kind of teasing half-smirk.

"Sure," said Lily. "Right, good. I'm glad there wasn't any confusion. So," she said a bit loudly, wanting to change the subject. "Um, I'd avoid heavy lifting in the future, if I were you."

"It's nice to know you care, Evans," James teased. He stepped up onto one of the steps leading into the train. "And that you think about me doing heavy lifting."

"Oh, it's not you I'm worried about, Potter," she replied coolly, not meeting his gaze as she lifted her trunk easily into the storage bin. "It's all the innocent bystanders whom you might accidently crush."

"What was that, Evans?" he called down at her. He took another step inside the train, probably to get out of firing range due to what he was about to say next. "All I heard was something about you, me, and a crush!"

Lily opened her mouth to snap out a retort, her lips curling slightly upwards in a small smirk, but before she could get a word out James had ascended the final step into the corridor of the train and disappeared from sight.

After closing the hatch to the luggage bin, Lily climbed up into the car after him. Though she was only a second or two behind him, Potter was nowhere in sight when she entered the car.

"How does he do that?" Lily asked aloud. Potter had an irritating habit of performing disappearing acts out of the blue; if Lily didn't know any better she'd have thought he had learned how to apparate.

She closed the door behind her, and the train's thick walls of wood and steel instantly muffled the sound of the bustling crowd out on the platform.

"Lily!" someone shouted jovially just before tackling Lily with a bear hug from behind. Locks of dirty blond hair splashed into Lily's face.

"_Pfffft. _Hi, Denny," Lily said, her face scrunched up as she blew away strands of her friend's hair. "I'm surprised you didn't stop to talk to Potter."

"What do you mean?" asked Denise, turning Lily around to face her. Her blue eyes were bright with excitement. "I didn't see him. Did you, Mary?"

"Nope," said Mary.

"How does he _do _that?" Lily repeated. Mary shrugged, and Lily decided to let it rest. "How was the rest of your summer, Mary?" she asked.

"Not as eventful since you left," she replied.

Mary already looked a bit fatigued, and Lily suspected that this was because she had been Denny's sole company until Lily had arrived. Though they couldn't have been together for more than half an hour before now, Lily knew from experience that being alone with Denise was an exceptionally tiresome occupation. Mary was a quiet girl with long, dark hair, a tall figure, and a pale, freckled complexion that made her stand out in crowds far more than she was comfortable with. She had a tendency to keep her feelings to herself, with the exception of Lily and her special confidant, and Denise tended to take advantage of Mary's quit nature by talking nonstop about herself. In fact, the only time that Lily could remember Denise being silent for more than five minutes at a time was two years ago, when a frustrated Lily, bombarded by Denise in the middle of studying for final exams, had compared Denise's ramblings to an overflowing bathroom faucet. This had earned Lily a week of silence, though Lily had been careful never to let on that this was more of a blessing than punishment.

"Were you just with James?" asked Denise, still on the original subject. "Maybe that's why you look so frazzled. What were you two doing?"

"Ha," Lily said dryly. "Nothing. He dropped all his stuff outside and nearly trampled me to death."

"You mean you fell head over heals?" Denise teased.

"Ok, I'm going to say 'ha!' again, but this time I really want you to note the sarcasm," said Lily.

"You're the one who was with him at Slughorn's party last year," Denise reminded her.

"It's not what it looks like–"

"Sure it isn't," Denise interrupted her. "So, how'd he drop his stuff?"

Lily sighed, silently wondering if Denise's none-too-subtle obsession with Hogwarts's premier jocks would ever end.

"Didn't you notice his arm?" she asked.

"Oh, that must have been what Tony was talking about when I saw him earlier," said Denise. "He said that James had some kind of flying accident a few weeks ago, and that he was worried about it affecting Quidditch. Apparently he had to get a new broom. It must have been pretty bad."

"How would Tony know about it?" asked Mary.

"Because he's a gossip monger–" Denise began.

"And the two of you co-head the secret club for gossip mongers, right, I forgot," added Lily.

"Ok, my turn – ha, ha, and _ha_," said Denise. "No, Tony overheard Remus talking to Sirius about how James had to order a new broom because he had some kind of flying accident over the summer."

"When was this?" asked Lily, wondering what Tony was playing at by asking James all those questions if he already knew what had happened.

"Like, ten minutes ago," said Denise. "Tony bumped into me after talking to Martha, and he said that if Martha has any brains she'll keep anyone who doesn't know how to ride a broom properly off the team and promote him – Tony, I mean – to center Chaser."

"Well that explains why he was so interested in talking to him just now – no, wait, what am I getting into this?" said Lily. "Please, can we find something to talk about other than Quidditch and James Potter? Why are you so interested in knowing if he's all right? You'd think that if he stopped playing Quidditch the world would stop turning."

"Oh, that's not why I was asking about him," said Denise. "I heard he was at Ellie's dad's – Oh, my god!" she said, gasping and grabbing onto Mary and Lily's arms with each of her hands. "But you didn't hear, did you? Oh my god–"

"Did we hear what?" asked Lily.

"Ellie's dad _died_," whispered Denise. "Just a few weeks ago."

"_Died?_" Lily gasped, bringing a hand to her mouth. "Oh, poor Ellie! I can't even imagine how she's handling this."

"Do you think we should write her?" asked Mary. "I mean, I don't know her that well, but–"

"I'm sure Robin would send her our best. You know Robin Barclay, right? She's in Ravenclaw with Ellie."

"Not well," said Lily.

"Well, if your not comfortable asking her, James might be keeping in touch with Ellie. You could ask him."

"Why's that?" asked Mary.

"Robin told me he was at the funeral," Denise explained. "Apparently their parents go way back. That's why I was asking about him."

"Sure," said Mary after a pause. "Um – not that I'm not upset for Ellie, but can we find something else to talk about that doesn't involve death?"

"No death, no Potter, and no Quidditch – you guys take the excitement out of everything."

"That's a bit crass, Denny," said Lily.

"Just saying," said Denise with a shrug.

"Shall we find a compartment before all the good ones are taken?" asked Mary, hoping to avoid a developing tiff between Lily and Denise.

"Oh, you two can," said Lily as the three girls made their way down the length of the train. "But I told Severus I'd–"

"Ugh! _Him?_" scoffed Denise. "What is with you, Lily? I thought you ended that whole weird thing last year!"

"We made up," Lily explained, affronted. "Look, I can understand why you might have a problem with him, Den, but that's only because you don't know him."

"Why would I _want _to get to know him?" asked Denise. "He's so–"

But exactly what Denise thought of Severus, Lily was never to know, because at that moment a loud BANG erupted from down the car as a compartment door slammed open and five figures toppled out into the hall amidst a thick blanket of greenish smog. They were coughing and cursing and covering their faces in their hands, and so it was a minute before Lily recognized Severus among the crowd.

"What happened?" Lily asked as she approached him. It wasn't until she was nearer that she realized Macnair and Crabbe were among the crowd. "Oh," she said, stopping in her tracks. Though she knew that Severus would obviously still be in contact with these people (they were his housemates, after all), she hadn't expected to find them sharing a compartment together when he had supposedly agreed to meet her in another car.

"Someone let off a dungbomb in our compartment is what happened," said Severus in a snappish tone that took Lily aback. Had Denise not been standing right there and had Severus not still been coughing miserably from the smoke, she might not have forgiven him for it so easily.

"Oh, yeah, he's a real charmer," muttered Denise under her breath. "It's a wonder I'm not more drawn to him."

"I thought you were going to meet me in a different compartment, Sev," she asked him once he had stopped coughing.

"I was – I'm – I just – they sort of pulled me in, and I've been trying to leave, but–"

"It's all right, Sev, they _are _your housemates," said Lily. "I don't expect you not to talk to them."

"Come on, Severus, we're going to find another compartment," called Macnair from down the corridor.

"You go on ahead," said Severus, not bothering to look over her shoulder at the expression Macnair and his gang shot at him on their way through the next compartment. Lily saw, though, as did Denise and Mary.

"Well…" said Dense slowly, rocking back and forth on her trainers. It was just the three girls and Severus in the corridor now, and Denise was clearly trying to think of a good excuse not to sit in the same compartment as Severus, whom she knew Lily would insist upon sitting with.

"So, we're going to go find a compartment," said Lily, tactfully allowing Denise to avoid coming up with what would no doubt be a terrible and utterly transparent excuse not to join them. "See you guys at the feast?"

"Yeah, sure," said Mary, relieved that things hadn't taken a turn for the worse where Severus and Denise were concerned. "C'mon, Denise," she said, tugging her lightly by the sleeve. The two held their breath as they passed through the smog still issuing slowly from the dungbombed compartment, and soon Severus and Lily were alone in the corridor together.

"So, shall we find a different car?" Severus asked, jerking his head towards the smog.

"Nonsense, it's just a quick clean up," said Lily, whipping out her wand. "People are always making a bigger deal out of dungbombs than they really are. It's all flash and no damage. _Scourgify!_"

Instantly the smog issuing from the compartment disappeared as if it had dissolved into thin air.

"Who would throw a dungbomb into a train compartment?" asked Lily, settling into her seat. She took a cucumber sandwich out of the small bag she had brought with her onto the train, unwrapped it and offered half to Severus.

"I have a pretty good idea who," muttered Severus bitterly. He started on his sandwich, indicating to Lily that he wasn't going to elaborate. He didn't need to. In fact, Lily was glad he didn't, as the last thing that she wanted to do now was get into yet another heated discussion about James Potter.

In fact, James _had_ dropped the dungbombs in the compartment. He had pulled on his invisibility cloak just after he was out of Lily's line of sight and had slipped the bombs into the compartment just as Crabbe was pulling the door closed.

Truthfully, James was relieved that the cloak allowed him to slip away from Evans. He had lied when he said that he didn't notice her avoidance of him at the end of last year, but he had hoped, even made himself believe, that it was all in his head. But she had just confirmed his original feeling, and the last thing he wanted to do was let on that he was upset by it. Now he had to face the question that he had avoided asking himself all summer: what had he done wrong at Slughorn's party to warrant her deliberate avoidance of him for the remaining days of the school year?

He readily forced these unsavory thoughts out of his mind, however, when he found Sirius and Remus in the corridor a few cars down.

"So anyway, that's why I had to stop owling her, because if she can't take the hint that - _Merlin's freaking bollocks!_" shouted Sirius, jumping into the air, for James had just whipped off his invisibility cloak directly in front of him. "Give us a warning, mate!"

"Sorry," said James, suppressing a laugh. "I keep forgetting how easy it is to scare people in this thing."

"What could you possibly be getting up to this early in the year?" asked Remus.

"Dropping dungbombs in the Slytherin compartment," he said nonchalantly, bundling up the cloak and tossing it back into his duffle. "Is Peter here yet?" he asked, peeking into the compartment that they were standing in front of.

"Yes – er, but try not to say anything too mean about–" started Remus, but James was already poking his head through the door.

Peter had already taken a seat and was busily going through an impressive assortment of chocolate frog cards. He looked up when the compartment door opened, saw James, and flashed him a wide grin.

"Hey James!" he called.

James had to do a double take, as he almost didn't recognize Peter, who had grown his hair out of the pudding-bowl cut that he had had since first year into what could now be best described as a mullet-in-progress.

"Wow, Pete," James said. "You look… taller," he finished, which was technically true, as the sheer volume his hair actually added a good two inches to his height. Behind James, Sirius snorted. Shooting a glance at Sirius once Peter had turned his attention back to his cards, James whispered, "He actually got it? But Peter hates change! He's had the same book bag since first year! He'd still be wearing the same trainers if his feet hadn't grown!"

"We're as surprised as you are, mate," Sirius said in a half-amused, half-disapproving tone.

"Come off it, you two. It's not that bad," Remus said quietly, although secretly he agreed that their friend could have come up with a more successful and, frankly, stylish way of making an impression on their first day back at school. James and Sirius threw Remus a look that was clearly meant to ask if he was all right in the head. To this, Remus responded, "Well, I'm sure it'll be better once it grows out." And with that he entered the compartment so as to avoid the topic altogether.

James made to follow Remus in, but Sirius stopped him. To James's surprise, he looked a bit miffed.

"What?" asked James.

"How come I only just found out through Remus that you, apparently, had to order a new broom because your old one got smashed into a billion pieces _when you fell off it? _And how come you never wrote me about getting the stuff for – you know – _the animagus thing_," he mouthed the last bit. "Hell, I didn't get one letter from you since I saw you in August."

"What are you talking about?" asked James, thoroughly confused. "I wrote you three times since then. I was wondering why you hadn't written me back."

"What?"

"Yeah," said James. "Wow, things mustn't have been good this summer. You normally don't just snap like that." He crossed his arms, still feeling a bit defensive.

"Sorry," Sirius said a bit sheepishly. He heaved a great sigh and ran his hand through his hair. "Ugh, I knew something else must have happened. I don't know what, but – ugh, sorry, mate."

"Forget it. Just stop looking so sad, it's weird," said James. "Come one, I'll tell you what you missed." He slid open the compartment door.

"How'd it happen then?" asked Sirius once they were all settled in the compartment. "Remus couldn't explain."

"That's because he didn't explain it in his letter," said Remus. "Your idea of a cliffhanger, I suppose."

"Hardy," said James. "I won't be able to do much better than what I originally wrote. I don't really remember how it happened."

"What do you mean, you don't really remember how it happened?" asked Sirius.

"I mean I… don't remember it at all," said James, and now it was his turn to look sheepish.

The silence was not comforting to James.

"The healers said that the fall – or the shock of it, or something – made me black out, so when I woke up I couldn't remember falling."

"But you must remember what caused it, even if you can't remember the actual fall," prompted Remus.

"No, that's the thing," said James, growing a bit frustrated. This wasn't the first time he had been asked to recount what he didn't remember. "I don't even remember being on my broom. It's like an entire half-day is just gone from my memory. One minute I was walking outside, close to home, and the next – I don't know. I was in the hospital. My Mum told me they'd found me out on the grass with my Commit all around me, in pieces."

"That's either the most fascinating or the most disappointing story I've ever heard," said Sirius after a sizable pause.

"That's not the worst part," said James, and Remus, Sirius, and Peter leaned in. "Mum wrote a letter to Dumbledore about making Quidditch a safer sport. It was the only way I could convince her to order me a replacement broom. Merlin, it was mortifying."

Peter laughed, and Sirius sank back into his seat, shaking his head.

"So how's the arm?" asked Remus. "The only thing you really said in your letter was that you hoped it would heal by the start of the Quidditch season."

"Nothing but trouble," answered James. "Helped me make a fool out of myself on the platform, trying to shove my trunk into the luggage bin with one arm."

"Oh, it wasn't that bad," said Sirius. "On the plus side, the drop entertained us all. Your face was priceless."

"Wait a minute, you were watching?" asked James incredulously. "And you didn't think I might want some help?"

"Well, Moony and I were going to come out an help, but then we saw you were getting on with Evans," Sirius explained, looking nonplussed as he examined his fingernails. "Albeit, after you nearly trampled her to death – and we didn't want to interrupt."

"Me and Evans?" scoffed James. "Are you mental? She's – she's – _weird_. Always hanging out with Snivellus. Please."

"I'm surprised you guys don't get along with her better," said Remus. "She's been known to break quite a few school rules in the name of fun. And I think she's nice."

"I never said she wasn't nice," said James, suddenly sounding defensive.

"So what_ are_ you saying?" asked Peter.

"I don't – whatever," said James, trying and failing to look less agitated. "Doesn't matter. Just saying."

"You're awfully jittery this morning, mate," noted Sirius.

"Yeah, what happened to the cool, calm, collected James Potter who's usually telling us what a great year it's going to be?" added Remus.

"You're not _really_ worried about Quidditch tryouts, are you?" asked Sirius. "Because I know you'll have to break in the new broom, but–"

"Please," James interrupted with yet another scoff. "Like Martha even has to see me fly before recruiting me again. She'd be crazy to let me go."

"Oh, my mistake," said Remus. "James must be here. I just found his ego."

"Oy, speaking of Quidditch, though," Sirius said, suddenly sounding much more cheerful. "You're gonna love this one, mate. Supposedly, Slughorn's got an in with one of the Hollyhead Harpies. Least that's what I heard my brother saying."

"In that case, I think we may need to reconsider our position on joining the Slug Club," said James.

"Oh, no no no no," Sirius said, waving his hands in the air. "You might be easily swayed by the prospects of a few Quidditch league leads, but I have more integrity than that."

"For shame, Sirius," said James.

"So, you have too much integrity to attend one of Slughorn's parties," said Remus, tapping a finger on his chin and looking up at the ceiling as though he were trying to figure out something very complicated. "But blowing up his classroom is fine?"

"Oh, like you had nothing to do with that," Sirius shot back, closing his eyes and leaning back in his seat. "I can't believe you're still harping on about it. Not today, Remus. It's too early and too cold."

"It has been getting unusually cold, hasn't it?" commented Peter. "Down another seven degrees today, I think it was."

His only response was a collective shrug from each of the boys.

"Did you guys hear what they're saying's the cause of the cold snap?" Peter continued. "My mum was reading the Marvel last Saturday. There was a column saying the cold might be being caused–" he took a deep breath for dramatic effect. "_By_ _dementors_."

"Wait a minute, what column are you talking about?" James interjected. "Not that one Bertha's dad writes?"

Starkie Jorkins was the writer of a weekly column in Marvel Magazine called "Stark Talk," a piece that most of the wizarding community considered to be about ninety-nine percent gossip. Starkie's daughter, Bertha Jorkins, a third year Ravenclaw girl, lived up to the family name, as she was quickly earning a reputation for herself as Hogwarts' premier purveyor of gossip.

"You mum reads Starkie Jorkins's column?" Sirius scoffed, his eyes snapping open as he leaned forward.

"Yeah, a lot of people do," said Peter defensively, sensing Sirius's condescending tone.

"Peter, have you actually read any of his other columns?' asked James.

"Well, I heard my mum talk about that one last Sunday-"

"Yeah, let me show you something," interrupted James, taking a folded up magazine out of his robes.

"Wait, why do _you _have an issue?" asked Sirius incredulously, clearly baffled that James didn't have more sense.

"I saw Starkie's headline in a stand at Diagon Alley last week. It's about Saint Mungo's, and my dad was mentioned in it. And, honestly, it was too crazy not to show you guys. Listen to this - _Bloodsuckers at Saint Mungo's: How our health care practitioners are being replaced by vampires_."

"What?" said Sirius, Remus, and Peter simultaneously.

"Listen, 'cuz some of it's actually true," said James, "Not the vampire stuff, I mean, but pretty much everything else. I only know 'cuz Saint Mungo's is all dad talks about now. Just listen. 'Directing Healer Anastas Nostrum turned heads last month when she announced that Saint Mungo's Hospital of Magical Maladies and Injuries would be temporarily closing its doors to volunteers and re-organizing its staffing. Several members of the hospital's board, including Mr. Henry Cheswick, Sir Harold Potter, and former director Sebastian Vance, were given early leave from their positions without explanation. None of the above were available for questioning, but several members of the staff and various patients had much to say about the changes in hospital policy. The most shocking of these testimonies came from a family in Penstock who wish to remain anonymous. According to them, the hospital refused to release the body of their nineteen-year-old daughter after she died from an illness in the hospital last Tuesday. The body was released almost a week after it was scheduled to return home for the wake. The girl's distraught mother told Marvel reporters that every time she went to ask about her daughter's body, she was given a different reason as to why it couldn't be released. Based on what was said, one reporter believes that the hospital misplaced the body.

'Many of the hospital's long-term patients are also unhappy with the changes taking place since the re-assignation of the board. Edwina Lafayette, a twelve-year resident of the hospital, told reporters that she was looking into home-care options due to a growing dissatisfaction with new staffing and policies, such as a drastic change in temperament in the healers assigned to care for her.'"

"Well, that actually sounds alright," Remus interjected. "Not nearly as extreme as some of the stuff he says whenever he gets a spot on the WWN."

"That's because everything I just read _is _true, according to dad," said James. "He doesn't go off his rocker 'till paragraph four. That's how he reels you in."

"Wait, so the stuff about that family and that missing body…" Peter began, though he didn't seem to want to finish.

"Does your dad know who that family from Penstock was?" asked Remus.

James looked around at them all for a moment or two before answering. "He won't tell me."

"So that actually happened?" asked Remus, his eyes bugging out of his head.

"Skip down to where it gets interesting," Sirius interrupted, leaning over James's shoulder to get a better look at the article. "When does he start talking about vampires?"

"Uhm… ok, here we go – 'Despite numerous laws preventing vampires from working in the public health care industry, there is a compelling amount of evidence suggesting that current hospital director Anastas Nostrum is a member of the night-walking creed. Could it be that Nostrum, a recent convert to the clan of the walking dead, is turning her staff into fellow bloodsuckers, and is in fact using the hospital as a blood bank to feed the children of the night? We went to well-known vampire and proponent of beast-being cohabitation rights, Ulric the Pasty, to find out more."

"Why would they interview Ulric the Pasty?" asked Remus, who avidly followed Ulric's pro-beast lobbying. "He's a chamber music composer, for Merlin's sake."

"_And _a well-known and controversial activist. I suppose they thought he'd be in the loop," James said before continuing. "'Said Ulric to Marvel reporters: "These are exactly the kinds of fear-driven sentiments that breed widespread ignorance about the vampire creed. So-called _sanguivoriphobia_ is nothing but a ploy to alienate those of us who wish to integrate into society peacefully, and reporters play into it with gusto." Ulric later added that as a continuous donator to the hospital (last year he gave ten thousand galleons to the Department of Magical Diseases alone), he knows for a fact that no vampires are currently staffed there, as current laws make it illegal. Ulric refused to discuss that matter further, but in revealing his ties to the hospital and noting that he disapproves of the current laws against hiring the bloodless for public health positions, he may have actually said too much.'"

"Leave it to Jorkins to take anything someone says and turn it around until it's exactly the opposite of what they meant," said Remus bitterly, crossing his arms with a huff.

"These rumors won't get any better with Bertha around, I'll tell you that much," said Sirius, leaning back and putting his hands behind his head. "Who wants to bet we hear at least five people mention it before the end of the welcome feast tonight?"

"No one here is going to take that bet, Sirius," Remus said, taking a book out of his bag and opening it to a folded page. "Hogwarts runs on gossip. I wouldn't be surprised if this rumor spreads faster than the one about you snogging Anita Alcott at Slughorn's Christmas party."

"Another Jorkins lie!" Sirius cried. "As if I would ever be caught dead at one of Slug's uppity parties."

"I went to one. They're actually not that bad," said Remus over his book.

"And you never went to another one," Sirius reminded him. "You only went to that one because Evans invited you."

James, who still had a picture of Lily as she had appeared on the platform in the back of his mind, with her adorable pink nose and sweet smile, shifted in his seat at Sirius's words. Though it hadn't bothered him before when Lily had asked Remus to Slughorn's Christmas party last year – in fact, he had made fun of Remus for it several times – it was now beginning to bother him. He would have consoled himself with the fact that he had ended up going with Evans to another of Slug's parties later in the year, but that had been part of a deal that they had struck as opposed to a genuine interest in going together.

"Why don't you just accept his next invitation and see for yourself, instead of turning him down like you normally do?" Remus suggested, putting his book down to look Sirius, at the same time hoping not to draw attention to the fact that Peter was the only one among them who had never received an invitation. "James went to his last one. What did you think?"

"If you're asking me to recommend it, you're barking up the wrong tree," replied James. "Besides, I told you I only did it to get into Slug's stash."

"I still can't believe that Evans went with it," Sirius added.

"Do you think you'll go to another of Slug's parties with her?" asked Peter.

"Doubt it," James scoffed, though his hopes were exactly the opposite. "I got what I needed."

"Charming, James," said Remus as he flipped another page in his book.

Sirius, growing tired of the conversation, took out a pack of Exploding Snap cards and began to shuffle the deck.

"Alright, I've been practicing," he said. "What's say looser buys the winners whatever they want from the trolley?"

"You're on," said James, whose superb dexterity gave him a great advantage in the game, and the boys began to play.

While the warmth and comfort of the Hogwarts Express distracted the students inside, the sky was beginning to break out once again into icy sheets of rain. Beyond the rolling hills and forests, hiding from human eyes in the darkest recesses of space, hoards of dark creatures in black, tattered capes lay in wait. The cold and misery that they brought with them may not have meant much to most of the wizarding community; but scattered throughout Britain were those who recognized the dementor's signal, those who had known to look for it. The guards of Azkaban were accepting the offer that had been made to them many months ago. They were willing to fight for the Dark Lord.


	3. To Dwell on Dreams and Forget to Live

**Chapter Three**

_To Dwell On Dreams and Forget To Live_

He's delirious. A sea of black surrounds him, spotted with scattered flecks of blue and white. A mosaic of light. Then the bright light grows bigger until it surrounds him, and suddenly he's lying somewhere soft, and blurry shapes are moving in and out of view. He hears voices as if they were underwater. A soft hand touches his face. He doesn't know whether to feel safe or afraid. Where is he? How did he get here? A blurry figure in green stands above him and asks him something, but it's muffled. He asks again. _"How are you feeling?"_ "Fine," he groans, and the response is a reflex, the question almost rhetorical. "No," he corrects himself. "Where am I?" His words are sluggish. He feels drunk. A whisper. Someone touches his hand. And then there was blackness.

"James?"

The voice is far away. He tries lifting a hand to grasp at it through the darkness, but he can't lift his arms. There was a game he used to play when he was a kid, where you would lie on the ground and someone else would press down on your arms and legs, saying that they were sewing up your limbs with sandbags, and when you were told to get up, it actually felt like your whole body was heavier. He felt like he'd been strapped down and sewn up so that he couldn't escape.

"James! Wake up you lazy sod! Breakfast is almost over!"

Something soft and heavy collided with James's face, and he jerked awake.

"Whazat?" he slurred, shoving the pillow to the floor.

"We've got Care of Magical Creatures this morning," Sirius was saying as he pulled on his socks. "Don't want to be late. Kettleburn always tells his best stories at the beginning of class. Here," he added, throwing James his shirt.

"Ok, could you stop throwing things at my face?" James grumbled.

"What's with you?" asked Sirius. "You're normally a morning person."

"Was dreaming," said James, rubbing his eyes of sleep.

"Ahhh, and you're grumpy because I interrupted," said Sirius with a sage-like nod. "What did she look like?"

"Who?"

"The girl you were dreaming about."

"Just because the only dreams you ever seem to have are wet ones doesn't mean it's the same for everybody else," said James. He was still half in bed as he pulled on his shirt. "I was dreaming about the flying accident, I think. Or being in the hospital afterward."

"I thought you couldn't remember anything from it," said Sirius.

"I can't," said James. "But I've been having the same dream ever since the accident, so that has to be what it's about. It's always the same thing. I think it's the hospital ward. Sirius?"

"Yeah?"

"How weird is it, do you think? That I can't remember so much of that day?"

Sirius looked at James for one long, hard moment before responding.

"It's weird," he said. "But weirder things happen every day, I suppose. Could have been worse."

"Could have been worse how?" James asked, disbelieving.

"You could have been stuck with me and my family over the summer, and forced to remember every minute of it," Sirius suggested. "If only I'd fallen off my broom like a twat..."

"You might get lucky and find someone pushes you down a flight of stairs," suggested James nonchalantly. "For, I don't know, calling them a twat or something."

"I'll just have to watch my step on the way to breakfast, then," Sirius said cheerfully, grabbing his messenger bag from his bed. "Ooh, wait," he said slowly, turning back to James and looking as though he had remembered something incredibly grim. "I forgot – Care of Magical Creatures." He put a hand on his stomach, as if to gage how hungry he was. "No, not worth it. I don't know about you, but I think I'll put off eating until after CMC – I don't wanna risk losing my breakfast if another skrewt decides to take a bite out of Kettlebrain's forearm."

"Thank you, Sirius," said James as they exited the room.

"For what?" he asked.

"For saying it's weird. For not compromising honesty for comfort."

"Anytime, mate," said Sirius. "You're weird as hell, and don't you forget it."

"Ok, now you can shut it."

They met Remus and Peter at the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall. Remus had had an early class that day, so he had been up long before James and Sirius and, not being very hungry in the mornings, was only just eating now.

"Almost thought you guys were going to sleep through class," said Remus as James and Sirius sat down on the bench opposite him. "Grab something quick before breakfast ends."

"Nope, CMC next," said James "We'll be waiting 'til after class gets out before filling our stomachs."

Next to Remus, Peter made a noise mid-chew that sounded distinctly like regret as he looked down at his now empty plate. Sirius looked him up and down disapprovingly and sighed.

"How do you always manage to forget to hold off until after CMC?" Sirius berated him. "I swear to Merlin, if you throw up on me again–"

"Remus was eating, so I didn't–"

"Remus isn't taking CMC this year, Peter, remember?" James said. "Not after last year."

Remus had taken Care of Magical Creatures with the boys in their third year; the boys had wanted to learn more about interacting with magical creatures ever since they found out that Remus was a werewolf, and Remus, unaware at the time that the boys knew anything about his condition, signed up for the class simply because everyone else in his dorm had done so. However, many of the creatures that they had worked with over the term had been unexpectedly hostile towards Remus, making it difficult for him to do most of the work in the class. In retrospect, Remus concluded that he probably should have known better, being that Mrs. Norris always seemed to be quite skirmish around him (something James and Sirius considered a great benefit to his condition), and the fact that he could never walk into the Magical Menagerie without making the owner scratch his head at the heightened amount of squawking and growling within his shop. James, Sirius and Peter had confronted Remus at the end of third year when he said that he wouldn't be signing up for CMC again because he was rubbish. James, realizing that Remus was more upset over the fact that he couldn't tell anyone the truth, simply came out and asked him if it was because of his unique problem. Remus had asked in disbelief what he meant. "You know," James had said. "You're – um – furry little problem?" The boys then confessed to a dumbfounded Remus that they had known about his secret for a while, explaining that if he thought they would stop being his friend because of his condition then he had a whole year of solid friendship proving him wrong. James was particularly adamant about the fact that just because Remus was a werewolf didn't mean that there was anything 'wrong' with him. However, one secret that the boys did keep from Remus was that they were currently working on a way to help him with his transformations. If anything went wrong and the entire plan fell through, they didn't want him to be disappointed.

"You missed the morning mail. Pan had this for you, from your Mum," said Remus, holding up an envelope to James.

"Thanks," he said, opening the letter.

Hello, Sweetheart!

I hope your first weekend back was time enough to get you settled in before the start of classes. The house feels empty without you. Your father and I have already had Bathilda Bagshot and Alice Fortescue over on separate occasions since you left on Saturday. You remember Alice, don't you? You must, she flew for Gryffindor when she was at school. Anyway, she had the most wonderful news! I believe I told you about that young man Alice has been seeing, Frank Longbottom. Well, don't tell her you heard it from me, as she wouldn't like to know that I was counting her owls before they've been delivered, but she couldn't wait to tell me that she may very soon be engaged! She seems nervous, the sweet girl, but from what I know of Longbottom he's a sensible, decent young man, and a fantastic Auror, and he'd have to be a fool not to take her.

Tell Sirius your father and I send our love. He stopped writing us at the end of August – tell him we'd still love to hear from him. And I hope Remus is feeling better. That boy always seems to be under the weather, doesn't he?

I wish I had more to write you now, but as I said things have been slow since you left. Anyway, your father and I can't wait to hear about your first week of classes.

Love and hugs,

Mum

"How's the fam?" asked Sirius.

"Mum asked about you," said James. "Says she wants you to keep writing her."

"I never got a response from my last letter to you parents," said Sirius.

"She said that same thing," said James. "Just write her again. She must have forgot."

"No problem," Sirius said happily. "It's quite refreshing to have a mother who's interested in hearing from me."

"You three had better get a move on," said Remus. "Kettleburn always pulls out the best stuff on the first day."

"Ooh, are we still taking bets on whether or not he lost another limb over the summer?" asked Sirius excitedly.

Sirius ended up regretting this last statement when he, James and Peter actually arrived to their Care of Magical Creatures class out on the sunny lawn by the Forbidden Forest. The class had been going rather well for the first five minutes, until Professor Kettleburn's left glove came clean off his wrist, along with what the class had believed to be his left hand. Monica Adams let out a terrible scream as she stared in horror at the gloved hand, which was twitching like an upside down spider on the grass. Other reactions ranged from expressions of severe nausea, to paralyzing white-faced shock, to a few colorful curses.

"Sorry! Sorry!" Professor Kettleburn was shouting as he scooped up his fake left hand in his right one. "Had a nasty turn with a re'em at a ranch I was visiting in North America. Got this with the gold the farmer gave me from its pelt to keep me quiet," he added, waving the twitching glove in the air with his good hand before strapping it back onto his wrist.

"What's it made of, sir?" asked Patrick Goldberg, who had always had a taste for the macabre and was never shocked by anything for two long.

"Animated wood from a mahogany tree grown by the Abenaki people of northeastern America. That's where these fellows come from, as a matter of fact," Kettleburn said, gesturing to the cage of baby rabbits he had attempted to lift before his hand had fallen off. "Had to barter with at least five – no – ten different men to get them. Almost lost my other hand in the process!" he added delightfully.

James raised an eyebrow to Sirius, who rolled his eyes. Kettleburn, who was always one for theatrics, loved to tell his classes highly exaggerated stories about his many injuries and dealings with breeders of magical creatures. His favorite story by far was the one about how had he lost his right leg, which was also replaced with an animated wooden fake. His stories altered every time he told them, growing more and more violent and elaborate. Next week he would probably be telling them that the re'em supposedly responsible for taking his hand had chewed it slowly off of his wrist while sitting on his chest.

"These," Kettleburn continued, gesturing towards the cage of pure-white, red-eyed baby rabbits, "are Mateguas. Kits, actually, not fully grown ones."

Several of the girls in the class made cooing noises as they got closer to the cage to examine the fluffy creatures.

"Now, they may not look it, but these little balls of fluff can be quite dangerous," Kettleburn warned. "Anyone know why?"

Sidney Valois, who had a particular affinity for working with magical creatures, raised her hand. "Mateguas feed off of subconscious thought. Anyone who gets too close to one can get trapped in his or her own dreams."

"Precisely, Miss Valois, ten points to Ravenclaw," said Kettleburn. "Now, while the easiest way for this to happen is for the witch or wizard to already be asleep, a wandering mind can also be your downfall if you find yourself in the midst of one of these creatures. Of course, young Mateguas don't have the power to trap a human in his or her dreams – only the mature ones can do that. However, kits can give off a feeling of sleepy serenity that wizards who are prone to daydreaming – Miss. MacDonald – are particularly susceptible to. Once your mind starts to wander it becomes increasingly more difficult to get it back on track. There are a host of other forest-dwelling creatures that have similar effects on wizards, and there are several ways to fend them off. Now, let's take a closer look, shall we?"

"I have never known anyone to fall asleep in one of Kettleburn's classes before," said James once class was over and everyone was walking back up the green to the castle. "Poor Mary," he added, stifling a laugh. Mary had gotten a bit too close to one of the Mateguas and had actually fallen asleep with her face in the grass. When Sidney finally shook her awake at the end of class, half of her face was caked in dirt. Now Mary was refusing to talk to Sidney for not waking her up before class was over.

"He usually has something a bit more exciting to start off the term, doesn't he?" said Peter.

"I'm willing to bet he's not all that ready for too much excitement yet," Sirius muttered back. "Sleep-inducing rabbits are probably the most excitement what's left of him can take for a while. Third years are gonna be disappointed. Remember our first class with Kettleburn?"

"I'll never forget it," said James. "A real live Demiguise. Unbelievable."

"It was, until he got it to stop being invisible," said Peter.

"I overheard some third years over breakfast saying something about a chimera," said Sirius. "I don't think they're gonna be too happy with rabbits after hearing that."

"Mateguas," corrected Peter.

"Whatever," said Sirius. "It's no Demiguise."

"Please, a chimera?" said James. "Kettleburn may be theatrical, but he's not insane. Well, he might be insane, but he's not suicidal. Well, ok, there's strong evidence to suggest he may be suicidal, but… where was I going with this?"

"No idea, but speaking of animals," said Peter. "When are we gonna get re-started on the – um – you know?"

"Well, I wanted to start tomorrow, but I didn't factor in Remus," said James. "If we're still not telling him, we can't exactly brew the thing in our dormitory."

"I'm way ahead of you, mate," said Sirius. "You remember my cousin, Andromeda?"

"Yeah, the cool one in the family," said James. "Only Slytherin I ever liked."

"Ok, well she told me about a secret passage she used to sneak off to with some guy she was seeing last year – and what do you mean, 'the cool one in the family?' What am I?" said Sirius.

"The Black sheep," said James.

"Ha."

"But she was in Slytherin," said Peter, remarkably the only one of them who was staying on track. "How can we be sure nobody else knows?"

"Because she kept it secret," said Sirius. "She didn't want anyone knowing who she was sneaking around with – nobody from Slytherin anyway, cuz they wouldn't have approved. You want to know who it is? You'll never guess–"

"Ted Tonks," said James distractedly as he went over the timetable he had taken out of his bag.

"What – how do you know that?" asked Sirius. "I only just found out who is was from her this summer!"

"Walked in on them – er, well let's call it snogging – in one of the common showers down by the pitch," he said, putting the schedule away. "I waited until Andy had left, but I couldn't resist asking Ted about it."

"And you didn't think to tell me?" cried Sirius.

"He swore me to secrecy," said James. "And then he called me a 'voyeuristic little git,' shoved me out of the showers and threatened to hex me all the way to Hogsmeade and back if I told anyone." Though this was true, what James failed to mention was that he had also been a bit jealous of Ted for scoring with Andy, and that this had kept him from wanting to bring up the incident at all. Though Andy was a Slytherin _and_ a seventh year when James was a third, he had harbored a bit of a crush on the spirited older girl for a while and was less than pleased by what he found in the showers that day. "So, yeah, I wasn't in a rush to spill it."

"Even to me?"

"Especially to you, Sirius," said James. "Please," he added, when Sirius gave him an affronted look. "Andy would have been the first person you asked about it to find out if it was true. And Ted is _not_ an all talk and no action kind of guy. Oh, stop pouting – where is this secret passage, anyway?"

Sirius still looked a little miffed, but he answered anyway.

"I'll have to write her again to find out exactly where it was, but I remember her saying something about having to go through a mirror to get there."

It took Sirius almost two weeks to hear back from Andromeda, which ended up working out because by then James's wand arm had completely healed, which meant that he was now able to perform all of the more complex flicks and swishes to go along with the incantations that would have otherwise given him trouble. The next day, they rose early in the morning, careful not to wake Remus, and followed Andromeda's directions to a small corridor on the forth floor. There were no windows in sight, so it was dimly lit, and there were no classrooms either, not even a single door, which would decrease their chances of being seen jumping into the passage during the day. Instead, a series of somewhat macabre paintings lined the walls along with a few mounted pieces of armory. The only thing they didn't see was a mirror.

"It's got to be around here somewhere," said Sirius. "This is the passage – see, look, this is the painting she was talking about," he added, pointing to a scene in oils depicting what looked like a giant devouring an army of knights.

"Down here!" Peter whispered loudly. He had walked down to the end of the corridor, which was almost completely in shadow due to the lack of light. Sure enough, mounted to the end wall was a huge mirror in an ornate silver frame. It looked ancient, and much of the reflective glass on the edges was worn away so that it added a ghostly kind of dinginess to whatever it reflected. Standing on either side of the mirror was a suit of armor. They gave an extra heir of decorum to the whole thing, making James feel for a moment as though he were asking for an audience with a king. _Or the Queen of Hearts,_ he thought wryly as the helmet on each suit turned to look at them. _Through the looking glass we go._

"What was the password again?" asked James.

"I got it," said Sirius. He stepped forward so that he was facing in the mirror the same way one might face a hippogriff. Slowly, tentatively, he raised his right hand so that his palm was pressed against the glass. Then, in a low voice so quiet that it was barely audible, he said, "_Mirare invertus eschauen uer innardi_."

Instantly, the mirror began to react to Sirius's words. Ripples began to pulsate outward from Sirius's palm as if the reflective surface had suddenly turned to water.

"Don't move your hand," James reminded him.

As the ripples increased in size, the reflection of the three boys in the mirror began to fade, looking more and more transparent with each new wave. Then they began to see it – a room, deep and dark, appearing in the mirror that definitely wasn't a reflection of the corridor behind them.

"Grab my other hand," Sirius told James.

James took hold of Sirius's free hand and Peter did the same with James, forming a link.

"Ok, go," said James once Peter had latched on.

James watched as Sirius stepped through the glass as though he were dipping into a body of water. First his arm, then his head and body – until he had disappeared from view with the exception of the hand that was still holding James's. James followed, feeling a cool, wet sensation on his skin as he stepped through the rippling glass. It only lasted for a second, and when he arrived on the other side he was completely dry. Peter appeared next to him a second later. A moment after that, right as James moved to take his wand out to light it, three torches flared up one right after the other, revealing a cozy, circular room of cool grey stone.

"Whoa," said Peter in awe. He was looking back at the mirror, which had stopped rippling and was now showing the corridor they had just left as though they were looking through clear glass.

"Cool, so we can make sure the coast is clear before we leave," said Sirius. "Man, I owe Andy one for this. It's perfect!"

"I think they use a similar charm for the general entrance into Saint Mungo's," said James, recalling the feeling of passing through the display glass when he used to go into work with his father. "Ok, so we'll bring the things here later today," he continued. "We'll use my cloak."

"Let's do it when Remus has Divination," said Sirius. "We don't want him getting suspicious."

These words of warning, however, proved too little too late when the boys met Remus at Defense Against the Dark Arts class later that day.

Remus had heard the boys get up early that morning and sneak off without him. He had heard them whisper something about a project to one another as they attempted to pull their socks and shoes on as quietly as possible. In fact, Remus had suspected that his friends were keeping something from him for the past couple of weeks. Although, if he had to be honest with himself, he would have to say that it had started even earlier than that – towards the end of last year. There were times when he would walk into a room and his friends would instantly stop talking. He hadn't said anything about it before, but today was different. The full moon was approaching, and he was feeling a bit less accommodating than usual, so he decided to confront his so-called friends about why they were sneaking off without him all the time. And if it turned out that his worst nightmare was true – that they were pulling away from him because of what he was – then at least he would know.

"I just want to know that the reason why I'm not a part of whatever you're doing isn't because you think I wouldn't approve," he told the boys as they all sat down together in one of the middle rows of desks.

He tried to sound less hurt than he really was, fearing that his friends were beginning to regret having a werewolf as a friend, despite everything they had said to the contrary. Instead of saying this, however, he took another route by insisting that it must be because he tended to be less of a rule-breaker than the others, and that this must be why they felt that they couldn't trust him.

"Remus, I – we," stuttered Sirius.

"We weren't – we're not–" tried James, but it was no use. Normally James was a fantastic liar – he had once told a spectacularly tall tale to Professor Taft that got him out of three weeks of detention – but he couldn't bring himself to lie to his friend so barefacedly.

"It's not the fact that I'm not included," Remus cut them off. "It's the lies. There's no way a Care of Magical Creatures assignment takes up that much of all your time. And Sidney Valois had no idea what I was talking about when I asked her what she thought about it-"

"Books closed, everyone!" Professor Donovan called as he entered the classroom, and so the boys had to drop the conversation for the time being. "And wands out. Today's lesson is going to be a practical one. We're going to be practicing some of the more complex defensive spells we've been learning about this week."

Donovan was a middle-aged wizard with reddish-brown hair that was beginning to become peppered with grey. Despite this, he was fit and youthful for his age. He wore small, round spectacles over clear blue eyes that shone brightly whenever he talked. The whole class had taken quite a shine to him for his good humor and friendly attitude towards his students. He was also one of the better Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers that they had had in years. Their previous professor, Donald Parish, had been a little too keen on dueling practice, a characteristic that made his classes exciting for the first month or so until Madame Pomfrey started complaining that too many students were checking themselves into the hospital wing with class-related injuries. His predecessor, Calvin Crumpet, had been exactly the opposite. So fearful was he of students getting out-of-hand in his class that practical lessons were extremely rare. His hyper-anxiety made him an easy target for James and Sirius's pranks, although the boys couldn't help but feel slightly guilty and even a bit responsible when Crumpet up and abandoned his post in April due to a crippling fear of being outnumbered by a hoard of armed and restless students. In retrospect, this was probably why everyone got carried away the following year with Parish's lax attitude towards classroom safety.

Donovan's practical lessons proved to be a healthy balance between the lessons of his predecessors in that they were interjected with a few agreeable safety regulations, such as prohibiting students from hanging one another from the ceiling by their underpants, which even James and Sirius, avid pranksters though they were, could admit was reasonable. Today, James was paired with Lily, Sirius with Sidney Valois (which he was excited about, as he had taken a shine to the girl ever since she had prevented him from getting bitten by a bowtruckle in Care of Magical Creatures two weeks prior), and Remus with Severus.

"Ok, who votes we let him in on it?" James whispered to the other two after Remus had gotten up to meet his partner. They both nodded fervently.

"Pay attention, lads!" Donovan called, and James, Sirius, and Peter soon dispersed. "This lesson is fairly simple, but I will advise you all to begin slowly so that you get that hang of it. Now, the only spell that you should be throwing at your partner is a _disarming spell_. The point of this lesson isn't offensive techniques, its defensive, as the title of the class suggests, so I don't want to see anyone getting hit with a bat bogie hex or jelly legs jinx – you know who you are – or whatever other charms seem to be all the rage these days. I don't even know what came out of your wand last week, Mr. Potter, but I'd better not see it again," Donovan eyed James, who seemed to think that the professor had just given him a very high complement, as he was looking quite pleased with himself. Lily caught this and gripped her wand more tightly, silently resolving not to let her guard down with her partner today.

"All right, Evans?" said James with a cool smirk.

"Better than you're going to be," Lily replied coolly, looking forward to wiping the smirk off of his face. In reality, though, she was a bit nervous. James had recently had the bandages taken off his arm, and since then he had been a bit like a dog let off its leash at the park, performing spells that were more complex and showy than usual. She didn't want to end up getting hit with some strange hex solely for the heedless boy's entertainment.

"You can begin once you and your partner are ready," said Donovan, though everything he said after "You can begin" was instantly drowned out by the sound of flaring wands, spells crashing against defensive shields, and several whoops and hollers.

"_Protego!"_ Lily shouted, for James had just sent a whirling stream of bright red sparks in her direction. The spell smashed into the invisible shield and exploded in a downfall of bright red sparks.

"What was that?" Lily shouted at him.

"Afraid you can't do better?" was James's retort.

Lily jabbed her wand so quickly, so nimbly at James that he didn't have time to stop smirking and react before the force of the spell caused his legs to trip out from under him, making him fall to the ground with a comical, "Ack!"

"That wasn't fair," he protested to Lily, who was laughing with evident satisfaction. "I wasn't ready."

"And how is that my fault?" asked Lily, not feeling the least bit apologetic.

"Whatever," James said, rolling his eyes. "So, can I turn around to go look for my wand now, are you going to hit me again?" he asked.

"Don't tempt me," Lily replied, and James couldn't help but grin to himself and shake his head as he turned around to pick up his discarded wand.

"Ok," he said once he had his wand, turning around to face her. "You ready for a fair fight now?"

"Is that what you have to tell yourself to get over losing?" Lily asked. "Because I'll remind you that we were in the middle of a duel, and you were armed."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," James muttered, readying himself once again. _Keep it together, Potter. It's just Evans. Stop being a pansy and hit her with something good._

But he didn't _want _to hit her with anything. He knew that she was more than able to shield his attack, but still. On the other hand, he was also sure that fudging his aim for her sake wouldn't do any good for his image. What was he to do? And why was he feeling so inclined to impress Evans? What was so special about her, really? Besides her eyes and her smile and her biting sense of humor and the way her laugher sounded like Christmas bells–

"_Protego!"_ he shouted, swinging his wand upward in a fluid motion just in time, as Evans had just sent what he was sure was a hex his way. "Don't think I don't know what that was," he said.

"I don't know what you mean," said Lily, feigning innocence.

"Whoa, nice one, Sev!" called Crabbe from farther down the classroom. James turned around, for he knew Remus to be Snape's partner. It turned out that Severus had cast such a strong defensive charm that it not only stopped the spell that Remus had send towards him, but rebounded it in Remus's direction with an impressive _zing, _flinging the wand out of his opponent's hand.

"Did you see that?" Severus asked Lily, bright eyed when he saw that she was watching.

"Yeah," said Lily, sounding impressed. "That was really good!"

James had to work hard to keep the look of slight disgust off of his face.

"You all right, Remus?" he called to his friend.

"Fine," he replied, rubbing his elbow where the spell had hit.

James turned back to Lily to get going on their practice again, but she was still smiling at Severus, and this time he couldn't quite rub the look of contempt off of his face.

"You'll have to show me how you do it so well," she was saying to Snape.

"_Barbadigoum," _James mumbled, his jealously easily masking his guilt over the deviousness of the attack. With that, the back of Lily's outer robe hoisted up behind her, came up over her head, and flew in front of her face. Fortunately she was wearing a skirt and leggings underneath – James wasn't so cruel as to pull that one without knowing she was – but nevertheless she was incredibly peeved.

"James Potter!" she shouted, her voice muffled from under the fabric as she tried in vain to pull it out of her face and back behind her head. James looked up at the ceiling as if he had nothing to do with what had happened, while somewhere behind him erupted the sound of Sirius's barking laughter.

"_Uuugh!"_ Lily growled once she had finally pulled the robes off of her face, which was now bright red from both embarrassment and lack of air.

"Ah, Evans, there you are," said James pleasantly, the way you might greet someone who had just turned up for tea. "Care for a comb?" he asked, noticing that her hair was significantly more frazzled than it had been before so that she looked about ten times more fierce than usual.

"_You," _she spat. _"Delinquidarium!"_

"_Protego!"_ James shouted, deflecting her hex with one swift swing of his arm.

Lily took a deep breath through her nose, realizing that she would have to calm down a bit if she wanted any chance of hitting Potter back with something good.

"Ok," she said as she exhaled. "You want to fight dirty, then?"

"If dirty suits you," said James with a debonair grin. That, more than anything else, caught Lily off guard. James chuckled, raising his wand, but then something else distracted him.

"Don't worry, Lupin, I'm sure you'd have done better if you could afford a proper wand," said Crabbe.

James darted his head over to where the jeer had come from. Remus, who had just retrieved his wand, suddenly grew very pale.

"I mean, we know you can't be wasting your money on decent clothing," teased Vanessa Krink with a delighted smirk. "So where's it all going?"

As Remus tried desperately to pretend as though he couldn't hear what they were saying while more and more people caught wind of the jeering, James, Sirius and Lily each gripped their wands furiously in their hands. James was first to react. He jabbed his wand discretely at Krink, Macnair, and Crabbe, all of whom were laughing at Remus, and muttered something under his breath. Seconds later, Vanessa let out a terrible shriek as she looked down to see her outer robes rapidly unraveling as the string that used to hold it together began to coil around her ankles. The same thing was happening to Crabbe and Macnair. All three were jabbing desperately at their ankles and the hems of their robes with their wands, but nothing they could do would stop the fabric from continuing to unthread.

Lily shot a glance over at James, who had a faint but satisfied smirk on his face, and she felt the corners of her mouth lift in a small smile, feeling a bit more warmly towards him despite the hex he had pulled on her earlier.

"Oh, dear," sighed Donovan, though he didn't appear to be incredibly displeased with what was happening. In fact, James was sure that he had heard what Krink, Crabbe, and Macnair had been saying. Donovan pulled out his wand and flicked it at the three Slytherins so that their robes ceased to unravel. "I think that's enough for today. It looks to me like you've all got a good handle on the spell. You three, stay put," he added to the Slytherins as everyone else started to pack up to leave. "Let me see if I can sort you out."

Lily packed up her things quickly, grateful for the early dismissal, and met Severus outside the classroom.

"I'd bet you anything that was Potter," he told her the second she saw him.

"So what if it was?" she said. "They deserved what they got. Did you hear what they were saying to Remus?"

"What about all the stuff those four get up to – they hex Slytherins all the time!"

"This had nothing to do with that, Sev, and you know it," said Lily, taken aback by Severus's stance on what she considered a simple matter of morality. "Why does it always have to be about house wars with you?"

"Why are you defending him?" asked Severus, who, for reasons beyond Lily's understanding, looked a bit hurt.

"Because they were making fun of him, Severus!" Lily hissed. "It was cruel!"

"Not _him,_" said Severus. _"Potter."_

Lily bit her tongue, hoping that it would hold back her frustration. "You know," she finally said. "For someone who claims not to like him, you sure do bring Potter up an awful lot."

Severus looked so taken aback that Lily thought for a moment that he might have swallowed his tongue.

"I don't – I – I–"

"Forget it, that's not the point," said Lily. "Listen, I've got to go to the Owlery."

"I – I'll go with you," Severus offered, hoping for another chance to redeem himself in their conversation.

"No, it's ok," said Lily. "I'm not sure how long it's going to take, or what owl I'm going to – er – use… and," she trailed off. In truth, she just wanted a few moments away from Severus to cool off. "I'll see you in Charms," she finished, before walking away.

Severus was staring after her, not sure if he should go after her or not, when Remus nearly collided with him on his way out of the classroom.

"Sorry," mumbled Remus before picking up his pace again.

"Remus, wait!" James called, and he, too, nearly collided head on with Severus.

"Watch it, Potter!" he shouted, still resentful at the boy.

"Sod off, Snape," James threw back at him distractedly. "Remus, wait up!"

Sirius and Peter followed close behind.

"Remus!" James called for the third time once he had nearly caught up to him at the end of the hall. "Hold _up. _Just let us explai-"

"Thank you for sticking up for me in there," said Remus stiffly, not meeting any of them in the eye. He was still hurt that his friends were excluding him from – well, from whatever they were doing – but that didn't mean he wasn't grateful for what happened in the classroom. Still, all this did was make him feel guilty about being cross with them, which made him feel even worse.

"That's not what this is about," said James. "I mean, yeah, Macnair and his crew are gits, but we want to talk to you about what you were saying before class."

"Look, just don't try to tell me that I'm crazy, because–"

"You're not crazy," said Sirius. "You're right. We have been working on something without you."

Remus looked, if possible, even more depressed than he had a moment ago.

"But it's _because,_" continued Sirius, "we're trying to surprise you. Or, trying to not disappoint you, in case it doesn't work out. Cuz it might not."

"What are you talking about?" asked Remus.

"It's about," said James, and he glanced around to make sure no one else was around to hear them. "It's about your… _your furry little problem."_

"My… Oh no, I knew it," said Remus tragically, grabbing his hair in his fists and looking up at the ceiling. "I knew it, I knew you guys would freak eventually–"

"What? No – shut up," said James. "We're not _avoiding _you because of it. Actually, the whole point is so that we can spend more time with you."

"I'm not following," said Remus, still sounding thoroughly depressed.

"Then follow me," said Sirius, and with a wave of his hand he started down the west corridor with the other three in toe, James practically dragging Remus along behind him.

"Where are we going?" asked Remus.

"Through the looking glass, Alice," said James. "To find a white rabbit – or something to that effect."

"Whoa," said Remus, once he was standing inside the secret passage behind the mirror.

"Yeah, pretty cool, huh?" said Sirius, looking around at the room once the torches had lit themselves. In the middle of the floor were all of the supplies that the boys had gathered over the summer – cauldrons, stacks of books, and piles of ingredients arranged in bags, jars, vials, and bundles of varying sizes. "And this," he said, pointing to it all, "is what we've been doing."

Remus looked around at it all confusedly.

"Extra potions homework?"

"No!" exclaimed Sirius, though he was smiling. "This is how we're going to help you!"

"By doing what, exactly?" he asked, going over to browse the titles of some of the books, hoping they would give him a clue. _"Advanced Transfiguration?" _he read aloud. "This _is _homework."

"Keep reading," said Peter.

"_From Fellow to Fauna,_" he continued, picking up the volumes one by one._ "The Alter Animalia… Becoming Beaste… Animagus_ – wait, this can't be what I think it is. Because if you've done even a little bit of research, which clearly you have, then you'd know _that it is illegal to attempt an animagus transformation before you're legally of age!"_

"So?" said Sirius, James, and Peter simultaneously.

"So?" exclaimed Remus. "So – so – _why?_"

"Why do you think?" asked James.

"I have no idea!" said Remus. "That's why I'm asking!"

"Think about it," continued James. "Werewolves can't turn other animals."

"No," Remus said after a pause wherein he absorbed the information being thrown at him. "Werewolves _eat _other animals."

"Not ones that it recognizes as kin," said James. "Same as any other animal."

"That's us, mate," said Sirius.

"You–" stammered Remus. "And your intention is to do what, then?"

"Keep you company, of course," said Sirius.

"We figured if you had company you wouldn't, you know, beat yourself up so much," said James. "Spend less time in the hospital wing afterwards. And don't even think for a second about trying to change our minds," he added, when Remus opened his mouth again to protest. "We're doing this with or without your help. I mean, we were doing it without before, only you had to ruin the surprise by getting all suspicious."

Remus looked around at them all, wondering what he had done to deserve friends like these.

"I… I don't know what to say. This is…" he sighed, taking it all in. "This has to be the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me."

"Ok, well, before we all start breaking out into hugs, I'll warn you not feel too grateful yet," said Sirius. "Now that you know you'll be helping us with it. And it's a lot of work, mate. No joke. Even James is struggling some of the higher level stuff."

"I'm not struggling, I'm – I just have to read it a few times," said James, who took great pride in his natural skill in Transfiguration.

"So," said Peter, grinning. "Are you in?"

"Well, it doesn't look like I have much of a choice," said Remus. "Thank you," he added, looking at them with all the gratefulness in the world, knowing that if he said something too sincere Sirius would get uncomfortable again and brush it off.

"Again, don't thank us yet," said Sirius. "We start tomorrow. Trust me, it's no slice of pie."

"Speaking of, I'm starving," said James. "If we run we can make it to the Great Hall before lunch is over."

"Let's get a move on, then," said Sirius, clapping a hand on Remus's back as the made their way over to the mirror.

"One thing, though," said Peter before they left. "I thought your cousin said this is a passageway. But it's just a room. Doesn't a passageway lead somewhere else?"

"Maybe she meant that the mirror itself was the passageway?" suggested James.

"Look, there's a grate there, in the floor," said Remus, pointing. "Maybe it leads somewhere."

"It could just be for air," said Sirius.

"Nah, I'm betting that any room clever enough to hide itself is clever enough to supply itself with fresh air without the use of a grate," said James, peering down at it. "But, lord, I'm _starving_. I think we'll save that adventure for another day."


	4. Generally Preferable to Lies

**Chapter Four**

_Generally Preferable to Lies_

Over the course of the semester, Remus proved to be an invaluable asset to the project, which the boys had now taken to calling "Wonderland" while in public. One Thursday afternoon towards the end of the semester, when the boys were gathered behind the mirror, James was going over some of the more uncommon herbs and powders, rechecking their inventory to make sure they had enough of everything for the next step, when Remus realized that he was already well versed in many of their properties. Remus's father had used things like northerne aconitum and lycan talc on some of the more serious wounds he had retained after his transformations, and Madam Pomfrey had even used asafoetida on him on one occasion (he would never forget such a powerful smell), so he knew how to handle the treatment of the more temperamental ingredients, some of which, he explained, had a tendency to explode if jostled the wrong way.

"Yeah, we know," said Sirius with a slight hint of irritation as he shoved the cauldron to the middle of the room. "I had no eyebrows for a week. My chin hair still won't grow in properly."

"You don't _have _chin hair," said James, who was flipping though _Animagus Law: How to Seek Ministry Approval and Why_.

"Exactly my point," said Sirius. "What are you worried about Animagus law for?" he asked when he saw what James was reading. "You know the Ministry would never approve us – we're underage."

"I know, but it's fascinating," said James, absorbed in the text. "Most of it's cautionary tales – I guess to scare you into going through the proper channels. Like this one guy, he was working on the same step as we are now, and when he took a dose of what he made – here, check out the drawing," he said shoving the book under Sirius's nose.

"_Uhg!_ What, is he _molting?_"

"Yeah!" said James excitedly.

"Is that supposed to be his _head?_ What happened to it? _Oh my god…_ Remus, come look at this!"

"Nope, that's fine," said Remus from a distance. "Just tell me that they were able to sort him out eventually. I don't need another reason to be worried about what we're doing. You know, besides the fact that it's _illegal_."

"Please, you know that only makes it so much cooler," said Sirius.

"Oh, he's fine, they found him in time to – oh… Nope, never mind. He's still in the hospital. Says here he still thinks he's an iguana," said James, though he still didn't appear too put off by this information. "Oooh, I see what he did wrong…"

"Good, so if one of us starts molting, you can be in charge of fixing it," said Sirius.

"I think I read something in "Stark Talk" about a lizard-man a few months ago-" Peter was saying.

"We should get started soon if we want to finish before potions," said James. "Have a look at the adder's fork and tell me if it's fermented enough," he ordered Sirius.

"Yes, sir!" said Sirius, mocking James's bossiness with a sarcastic salute as he marched over to inspect a large jar filled with thick green smog. "Oh yeah, I'd say it's done. It's gonna smell something powerful when we take the lid off."

"Got it covered," said Remus, taking out his wand. "Bubble-head charm."

"Remind me again why we didn't have him in on this sooner?" asked Sirius.

"Same reason I'm here now," said Remus. "I'm smarter than you are."

Fortunately, whatever Sirius said next was completely muffled, as Remus flicked his wand at Sirius's face, procuring a thick bubble around his nose and mouth.

The adder's fork was the only thing that the boys needed to add to the potion today, but they had to go about the process diligently for fear of having to redo three month's worth of work if they did something wrong. It took twice as long as they thought it would to stir and set the potion, so they had to literally run down two flights of moving stairs in order to get to the dungeons in time for class later that day.

"Oi! Potter!" someone shouted when James was just about to turn around the corner into the dungeons.

James turned around to see Martha Parr striding towards him down the Grand Staircase with great determination.

"Go on ahead," he told the others. "I'll catch up. What's up, Martha?"

Martha only stopped walking towards James when she was six inches away from his face. She looked even more aggressive than usual with her chin pushed up and her hand curled into fists at her sides. Both of Martha's parents were Aurors, so all of her mannerisms held an air of martial authority. It was part of the reason why she was such a great Quidditch Captain; she was one of the only students that James respected and – if he were being completely honest – feared. So when she strode up to him with that icy glare, James had to swallow his initial panic with a gulp.

"Just answer me this," Martha began, boring her eyes into his.

_Uh oh_, thought James.

"What – exactly – do you have going on in your life that's more important than your team?" she asked.

"Uh…" said James. "If this is about last week, I told Chrissie to tell you I wouldn't be able to make it to practice–"

"Yeah, I heard," said Martha.

"We all heard," said Tony Marsden, who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere and situated himself behind Martha's right shoulder.

"So, what is it, then?' asked Martha, her fists on her hips. "Don't feel like winning the cup this year? Hm?"

"Yeah, too good to practice with the rest of the team?" said Tony. "Cuz _I_ still show up, though I don't remember falling off _my_ broom over the summer–"

"Sod off, Tony," shot James. "When my midair somersaults get as bad as yours, we'll have something to worry about."

"For the last time, when do you_ ever_ need to do a somersault during a Quidditch match?" asked Tony. "You only do it to show off like a sodding-"

"Shut up, the both of you!" ordered Martha.

"I'm on your side!" said Tony, looking affronted. "And listen – as far as I'm concerned, it's no sweat if Potter's got better things to do. I made a fine fill-in for center chaser last practice."

"Tony, there were only two of you. There can't be a _center_ chaser with only two people. And you _should_ be concerned when our best chaser, who _unfortunately _happens to be _you_," she whacked James on the shoulder, "doesn't show up to practice."

"What about me?" asked Tony.

"Listen, Potter," said Martha, ignoring Tony. "I wasn't gonna tell you this now, because it's not like you need a reason to gloat, but I'm planningon naming you Captain once I'm gone next year."

"_What?" _cried Tony.

"But I can't _do_ that if McGonagall has reason to believe you're not committed to the position," she continued, poking James in the chest. "So are you?"

"Yeah, I – I am, I just – wow, ok…" stuttered James, a little taken aback by the sudden and hostile way in which this tremendous news was delivered. "Listen, Martha, I'm sorry about skipping. I am. I only did because…" James faltered.

"Because why?" asked Martha.

"_Because,_" said James, "I was visiting Remus in the hospital wing. I'd only just found out he was there ten minutes before practice, so…"

"Oh," said Martha, her eyes softening for the first time.

"Again?" asked Tony in a disbelieving tone.

"Yes, again," James sighed. This was true: last week, Remus was woken from his transformation a bit more banged up than usual. This tended to happen from time to time, when he was particularly stressed out for some reason or another, and all it meant was that he would have to spend a few extra days in the hospital wing afterwards. James had hesitated to tell Martha where he was, however, because he wasn't keen on advertising how often Remus had to visit the hospital wing, lest people start to see a pattern in his stints there. Unfortunately, Martha had backed him into a corner. Literally, actually, as with each shove that she had given him he had to take a few steps backward so that his back was now pressed uncomfortably against the wall of the Entrance Hall.

Martha sighed.

"Ok, just… Listen," she said, squeezing the part of her nose between her eyes as if just the sight of James was giving her a headache. "I've got another practice scheduled for tomorrow, and you had better be there, James Potter. Or else."

"_Or else_," repeated Tony.

"Would you cut it out?" Martha shouted at Tony. James would have laughed if he weren't so annoyed: the way Tony kept on repeating everything Martha was saying, combined with his beak-like nose and the way he stood behind her right shoulder as if on a perch gave him a remarkable resemblance to a oversized parrot.

"I'll be there, ok?" he said. He would have to skip going back to the passage behind the mirror with the others tomorrow, but so be it. Remus in the hospital was one thing, but the potion was stable enough to wait.

Martha seemed satisfied, because she dismissed him with a curt nod and marched off. Tony looked like he was about to say something else, but James walked through the dungeon doors before he had the chance.

"I told you she wouldn't be happy about you skipping," said Remus when James finally made it to his seat in the potion's classroom. "You don't have to visit me every time, you know–"

"Don' be daft, of course I do," said James curtly. "I'm gonna have to skip out on Wonderland tomorrow, though. Martha scheduled a makeup practice. You guys can handle it without me, right?"

"We'll try, but if it gets too complicated we're going to have to wait until your schedule clears," said Remus.

"Hey, I can't help it that everyone wants a piece of this," said James with a smirk.

As if to reinforce this point, Denise walked by the row of seats where James and the others were sitting waved her fingers at him flirtatiously.

"Hi, James," she said.

"Hey, Denise," said James, flashing her a grin before she walked off.

"Maybe I should join the Quidditch team," said Sirius, starting after Denise's backside as she walked to the front of the classroom. "I'm starting to see the perks."

James smirked, but in truth the perks that Sirius was referring to were a bit wanting in James's eyes. Sure, getting that kind of attention made him feel pretty good about himself, but as he imagined himself flying through the air amidst a stadium of roaring fans, it wasn't Denise's face that stood out to him in the crowd. For a moment he lost himself in the fantasy – he scores a fantastic goal, Chrissie catches the snitch, the game ends with Gryffindor in the lead by at least a hundred – no – two hundred points, and beaming up at him from the stands is a girl so beautiful it makes his heart skip a beat. He flies over to her, and she leans up in the stands, extending herself towards him, and they meet for a kiss, her hand on his arm, his running through her thick red hair–

"Oi, Captain Starry-Eyes, what's going on up there?" said Sirius, knocking on the side of James's head.

"Ow," said James, rubbing his temple. "Nothing."

"I was saying, when do you think you'll be free to jump down the rabbit hole again?" said Sirius.

"Not that I'm superstitious," said Remus, "but it feels like a bad omen to be talking about this here, of all places."

"What do you mean? Oh, yeah, right, like we'd blow up the same classroom twice," scoffed Sirius, rolling his eyes to James. _"Ouf _– hey!_"_ he grunted, as James had just elbowed him in the gut. He found out why a second later when he looked over at James and saw Lily standing at the end of their row. She had clearly heard him, for she raised her eyebrows to James in a knowing kind of look before continuing over to her seat in the front of the classroom.

"Nice going," mumbled James.

"Oh, please, she knew the whole time," said Sirius in a throwaway tone. "You as much as told her we did it last year when you went begging to her for help."

"I didn't _beg_," asserted James as he stared after Lily. It was a moment before he was really conscious of the fact that he had gone back to imagining the touch of her hair through his fingers – until she seemed to sense the eyes on the back of her head, for she turned around as she sat down next to Snape and shot him a puzzled look. James darted his eyes away and tried to look busy with his scales.

"What?" Severus asked Lily, who had seen the brief exchange.

"Nothing," said Lily, though as she said this she made a mental note to watch her back for the next couple of days. She seemed to be catching Potter looking over at her a lot lately, and she was beginning to fear that she might be the boy's next target for an elaborate prank.

"So, I'm pretty sure the class is taking bets on how long it'll be until another classroom explodes," said Severus. "I'm personally more interested in how long it'll be before those morons actually get caught."

"Sev, don't be mean," Lily berated.

"So, what, you think they should just get away with it?"

"It's not that, it's just…" Lily paused, thinking of what to say. "It happened a while ago and I just don't see the point in hanging on to it. I mean, if no one's been able to prove it was them by now, I don't think-"

"Oh, come on!" hissed Severus. "Everyone knows it was them!"

"I'm not saying it wasn't," said Lily calmly. "I just don't see the point in obsessing about it."

"I'm not _obsessing_," grumbled Severus. "They're just… I mean, come on! Don't they annoy you?"

Lily sighed as she flipped through her copy of _Intermediate Level Potion Making_. "I've said it before and I'll say it again. For someone who _claims _not to like them, you really do bring them up an awful lot–"

"Because they're nauseating!" Severus cried in exasperation, setting a fire under his cauldron with a little too much gusto. "Potter acts like he's so cool… You know, I heard that Jorkins girl saying his flying is shot – fell off a broom over the summer or something, smashed it to smithereens," he added, eager to remind Lily of anything that would make Potter out to look like a fool. "What kind of Quidditch star falls of a broom?"

"The way you talk, Sev, you'd think he deserved it," said Lily. "James and his friends, they may be a lot of things, but they're not _that_ bad."

"How can you say that after what happened at the end of last term?" asked Severus. "Your hair was purple for a week!"

"Yes, well, that was bad, I'll give you that. And I do agree with you that it was probably them," Lily admitted, deciding not to tell him that she knew this for a fact. "But no one got hurt – well, besides Duncan McCloud, but he really shouldn't have been hanging from the ceiling, that was silly. Look, all I'm saying is that you're making them out to be – oh, I don't know – _evil_ or something. Pulling a prank is a far cry from the worst of what goes on around here," she finished, both hoping and dreading that Severus knew exactly whom she was talking about.

In fact, the potions debacle of '74, as everyone was now calling it, was by far one of the most damaging 'pranks' that Professor Slughorn – and most of the teachers at Hogwarts for that matter – had ever witnessed. Truth be told, the only reason why Lily was going easy on the Marauders now was because, thanks to the deal that she and James had struck at the end of last term, she now had an idea of why the boys had done what they did. Also, she was pretty sure that they hadn't intended their scheme to be quite as 'successful' as it turned out to be. And, if she had to be perfectly honest, the whole thing was, in retrospect, pretty impressive. Then again, that same incident was also the start of a series of events that had nearly lead Lily and Severus to a breaking point in their friendship.

The whole debacle had begun when James, Sirius and Peter were in the first stages of becoming animagi. While preparing for a potion that they would have to make as part of the early stages of the process, they discovered that three of the ingredients could not be bought anywhere on the open market. Wizards had to cultivate it themselves because it took a special license to be able to handle the materials. However, they suspected that Slughorn had a stash of everything they needed in his private storage closet. Unfortunately, there was no way he would let any of his students into his closet, least of all the most notorious troublemakers in the entire school. Therefore, they had no choice but to steal the ingredients. To make things more complicated, the classroom that leads to the closet was inaccessible when classes were not in session, so they would have to break in during one of their potions classes. The boys decided that James could use his invisibility cloak to slip into the office, but they couldn't risk Slughorn noticing that one of his students had suddenly gone missing. Most teachers kept at least one eye on the mischievous boys at all times as it was, and Slughorn had a habit of slipping into his office at odd times (most likely to stuff a few pieces of crystallized pineapple into his mouth), which would increase the danger of being caught.

The boys quickly realized that in order to have and chance at getting into the private supply, they would have to create a sizable diversion. Sirius had come up with the idea of dropping several boxes of Fizzing Wizbies into a few brewing cauldrons and letting the side effects – they were bound to be obnoxious – create the havoc they needed to go through with the rest of their plan without being noticed. It was perfect, he said, because no one was going to question them for carrying around a box of candy. It was subtler than dungbombs, but just as effective overall. The others thought it was a great idea, but Remus had suggested that instead of sabotaging their peers' cauldrons, they could drop the candies into some of the beakers in the public cabinets around the classroom. Remus himself didn't know what they were actually stealing the ingredients for at the time, as James, Sirius and Peter had made up something about Sirius needing a few provisions to perform a crude incantation that would keep his family out of his bedroom while he was stuck at home with them. After some debate, Remus had finally agreed to help. They boys knew that he would give into the story eventually, as Remus was well aware of the horror-show that was the Black household and sympathized with Sirius's situation. Besides, just because he was usually the voice of reason didn't mean that he didn't enjoy a little mischief-making every once in a while.

So, using a secret passage that they had discovered in their second year that leads to the cellar of Honeydukes, Peter, eager to be of use, snuck five boxes of Wizbies into the castle. All they had to do was wait until their next class and drop the Wizbies at the earliest opportunity.

Slughorn often spent extra time examining the potions of his favorite, most talented students, Lily and Severus. The two often sat together in potions class, which meant that Slughorn would have his nose in their cauldrons as opposed to in the boy's business for an extended amount of time. They figured that all they needed was less than five minutes to slip over to the cabinets, drop in the Wizbies, and rush back to their seats without being noticed. Just to be sure that they wouldn't be caught running back to their seats as the cabinets behind them started thundering and fizzing, they had taken a small beaker of kneazle milk from the public cabinet the day before (an easy swipe) and dropped a few Wizbies inside in the safety of their common room to see how long the reaction time was. It took less than ten seconds to start reacting noticeably, so they would have to be quick.

The boys took care to sit near the back of the classroom, so as to have better access to the cabinets. This meant that they were farther away from the office door, but this was not a problem, as James could slip over there easily in his invisibility cloak. When Slughorn started making his rounds to examine each student's cauldron, Peter took the boxes of candies out of his bag and divided them between Sirius, Remus and himself. They waited until Slughorn, per usual, leaned over Lily's cauldron to take a long whiff and begin asking her questions about her process.

When the professor's back was fully turned, the three box-laden boys got up and slunk over to three different public cabinets, pretending to be in search of an ingredient for their potion. They had to make sure that they all poured out their boxes at the same time, so that one cabinet wasn't exploding while one of the others was still pouring out the Wizbies into another. When they were all at their respective cabinets, they turned their heads to look at the others, and nodded definitively.

Sirius counted the seconds in his head as he poured his first box into a large vile of purple liquid. _One, two, three, four, five._ Then the next box. _One, two three, four…_ He didn't dare count how long it took to get back to his seat.

Peter was the last to return to the table, and just as his bottom plopped down swiftly on his seat, him huffing nervously all the while, his cabinet started to emit low gurgling noises. A few students looked up from their work to stare quizzically at the piece of furniture that was now beginning to shudder and belch. Then, from the other side of the room, a sound like a firecracker going off, followed by a high-pitched whir, erupted from a different cabinet. Slughorn's head swooped up from over Snape's cauldron and his body whipped around to face the direction from which the noise was coming. His eyes grew wide and his mouth hung agape as a slew of golden sparks shot themselves out of the cabinet, leaving a burning hole in one of the doors.

"What the devil-" he began to exclaim, but was cut off as Vanessa Krink, a snobby Slytherin girl with an annoyingly high-pitched voice, started to scream and jump up on her desk, frantically pointing at something at the foot of the gurgling cabinet.

Everyone saw quickly enough what she was scrambling away from – the beaker of clear fluid that Peter had dropped his box of fizzing wizbies into had reacted to generate an unearthly amount of sluggish purple foam that was now oozing at an incredibly fast rate through the cracks of the cabinet doors. There was so much of it that it was already spreading towards the students' desks. The whole cabinet seemed to be expanding from the amount of foam that was generating inside it until finally the wood frame started to crack and the latch on the door resembled a button that was about to pop off of a small shirt that had been forced onto a very large man. Most of the students were already out of their seats and scrambling to the center of the room. All of this was happening so quickly that Slughorn, always slow to react in times of crisis, was still at a loss for words. Finally, the cabinet that Remus had been responsible for started emitting short, incredibly loud bangs. Slughorn turned around once more, his rotund stomach bouncing from the force of the movement. On the sixth or seventh bang (they happened in such quick succession), the doors of the cabinet burst open from the force and the banging immediately became ten times louder. Everyone threw their hands over their ears and winced. With every bang a different color flashed brightly from within the cabinet, so that the effect was something very much like a strobe light. As this happened, another slew of golden sparks erupted from the other cabinet, then another, and another, burning more and more holes in the wood, the time between each firework-like shower dwindling rapidly from seconds to milliseconds. The sparks were shooting around the room, flying over student's heads and crashing into walls, desks, and – worst of all – cauldrons, creating a mass of boiling puddles on whatever floor space that wasn't already covered by purple ooze.

By this point, total chaos had broken out among the students. About half of the class was shrieking and throwing their hands up over their heads as they ran around the room like headless chickens. No one knew where to run for cover, as something was erupting from almost every corner of the room. Vanessa fell off the desk she was standing on as one of the golden sparks can zooming right at her face. Somehow, for reasons beyond anyone's understanding, Duncan McCloud was suddenly hanging from one of the lamps attached to the ceiling. Directly below him a large puddle from a turned over cauldron was bubbling menacingly. Many students were now starting to pile onto the desks to get away from the ooze that was now over a foot deep and had spread to cover a good third of the floor. Others found refuge under the tables on the side of the room where the ooze had not yet spread in order to protect themselves from the sparks. This is where Sirius, Remus and Peter, all dumbfounded by the immensity of these reactions, chose to hide.

Slughorn, though still stupefied by everything that was happening, had nevertheless gained enough control over himself to fetch his wand from his desk and begin to dash back the zooming sparks while calling order to the class.

"Alright everyone!" he was shouting. "Just stay calm! McCloud, get down from there at once! Everyone stay CAAHHGHH!"

Sirius, seeing that Slughorn was now completely preoccupied, as one of the sparks had just zoomed past his face close enough to light his mustache on fire, poked his head out from under the desk to catch a glimpse of the closet door. It was shut, which he took to mean that James had already found his way inside.

"He's in! This is working out great!" said Sirius to the others in a loud whisper.

"Are you kidding me?" Remus shouted exasperatedly. This had all ended up being a lot more trouble than it was worth. Their experiment in the common room hadn't been nearly so colorful.

"EEEEE-NOUUGH!" shouted Slughorn, and in three successive blasts from his wand he produced thick, bubble-like shields over all three cabinets. It took a few moments for everyone to realize what had just happened, but soon enough the shrieking died down and everyone ceased trying to climb on top of or under their desks. Slughorn huffed as he looked around the room, the hair above his left ear smoking, his thick moustache thoroughly frizzled so that it resembled a cat with its hair standing on end.

"Now," he began in a voice of forced calm. "We are all going to evacuate this classroom _in an orderly manner_ and file into the entrance hall, where you will_ wait patiently_ until I come for you… _Now_!"

Professor Slughorn, who was normally a very jolly and mild-mannered man, appeared to have shocked his students with his change in temperament far more than the preceding chaos had done, as everyone jumped when he shouted and dashed up the stairs obediently, fearing that he would turn his wand on them next.

Sirius scanned the crowd nervously for James, who still had yet to be seen. The three boys tried to hang back as long as possible so that they were the last ones out of the dungeons. Just as they thought that they would have to leave without any sign of James, Sirius felt an abrupt tug on his shirtsleeve. Turning to Remus and Peter he whispered, "Ok, let's go!" and the four of them dashed up the stairs after the rest of the class.

Once they were in the Entrance Hall, James made sure that Sirius, Remus, and Peter were blocking him from everyone else's view before he took off his cloak.

"Why'd you still have the cloak on? You should have let him see you leave with the rest of us," said Peter.

"Too crowded," James huffed as he frantically stuffed the cloak back into his bag, which Sirius had grabbed for him on the way out. "I put on the cloak under the table before I went into the closet, but Slug got a hold of everything a lot quicker than we anticipated, so I had to dash back, and I didn't have time to duck and cover before taking it off."

"So, did you get everything?" asked Sirius, waving off the fact that James had just barely prevented himself from getting caught.

James looked around at the three of them, grimacing. "Um… yeah. There's something…" He took a deep breath. "Don't be mad, ok?"

"What?" asked Sirius. "Did you forget something?"

"I… I couldn't get in," he admitted lamely.

"_You what?_" hissed Sirius, Remus and Peter in unison.

"It was locked," James said, grimacing.

"Did you try _Alohamora?_" asked Remus exasperatedly.

"Oh, no, I forgot that one – gee, and there I was trying to pry it open with brute force!" James replied sarcastically, looking quite affronted. "I tried as many charms as I could, I even tried using _Topelarium_ to unhinge the damn door, but that thing is locked up good. And it's not like I could have just blown the door off its hinges completely. Someone was bound to notice that, even with everything that was going on. The only thing that's gonna get us in there is the key."

The boys stared around at each other dumbfoundedly.

"I can't believe we just did all that for nothing!" Remus finally said, bringing a hand to his forehead. "What if he finds out it was us? Anyone could have seen us at those cabinets! Half the class is made up of Slytherins, and they're bound to tell Slughorn if they saw anything just to get points taken away-"

"Hey, hey, take it easy, alright?" cautioned Sirius. "As far as we know, we're in the clear. So let's just try to act as surprised and innocent as everyone else," he gestured toward the rest of the class, who were all talked animatedly in the Hall, or else trying to un-singe their hair or dump purple goo out of their shoes. "Which," Sirius added after some consideration, "would probably involve us not standing around in a conspiring circle and talking in very low voices."

"Yeah, right," said Remus, rolling his eye. "Innocent. That's a new look for us."

As a matter of fact, Remus was partially right in his fear that somebody had seen them acting suspiciously. Though Severus and Lily had not seen the boys go up to the cabinets, they did notice several things during all the commotion.

When the fireworks started, Severus had turned to Lily and shouted, "This has got to be Potter or Black! It's got their names written all over it–"

"Sev, get down!" Lily exclaimed, pulling him under the table with her. Severus stopped talking at once when he realized that he was now crouched under a desk with Lily, and that their faces were only inches apart.

"Oh my god, _what_ is going on?" Lily was shouting.

Severus looked around. "Look – look over there! Black and Lupin and Pettigrew – do you see them?"

"Yes, Sev, I see them – but I-"

"And do you see Potter?"

"I… no, but… But who cares at this point? Ohhh, look out!" for the purple goop was inching their way. Climbing out from under the desks, the pair tried to make their way to the center of the room, which seemed to be the area least affected by the chaos.

"He's not here!" Severus continued. "And I'm telling you, I saw him come in!"

"Alright, Sev, alright!" Lily was shouting in frustration as Severus whirled about on the spot, trying to see if Potter was anywhere to be seen.

When Professor Slughorn had silenced the cabinets and everyone stopped running around, Severus could finally see for sure if Potter was around. "See?" he whispered to Lily once he was sure. "I don't see him anywhere – and Black just grabbed Potter's bag! Look!"

But as the two made their way up to the ground floor with the rest of the class, Lily shook her head. "I don't know, Sev. I'm not defending them, but sometimes your... your rivalry or whatever seems a little obsessive."

"It's not an obsession!" grimaced Severus. "Who do you think started it, if it wasn't them?"

"I'm not saying I don't think it was them. I'm just saying that sometimes you seem to go out of your way to–"

"I don't have to go out of my way! They go all the way there on their own!"

"Alright, Sev," sighed Lily as she took a seat on one of the bottom steps in the Entrance Hall. "I just don't want to talk about it right now." Truth be told, her usually infallible good mood had flattened a bit when her shoes got filled with goop. And the hem of her robes were now at least six inches deep in the stuff. Sure enough, when she took off her shoes to drain out the goop, she found that her socks were colored completely purple so that she more or less resembled an overgrown Cornish pixie from the knees down. Severus, deciding to drop the subject – however reluctantly – followed suit for the time being and took of his own shoes.

Lily, for her part, didn't think anyone else besides the Potter and his friends could be both clever and stupid enough to do something like this. However, she was growing tired of Severus's constant suspicions regarding the boys, and agreeing with him on this point would have only made his ramblings about them all the worse. Glancing over to where the Gryffindor boys were standing, she saw all four of them, Black, Remus, Pettigrew, and Potter, standing together in a tight circle, talking rather anxiously.

"I'm going to go see if the noise from the dungeons has stopped," Lily told Severus, who nodded distractedly. She got up and walked over to the entrance to the dungeons and pretended to listen for any sounds that might be coming up from the classroom. Instead, she did her best to listen in on the conversation that the four boys were having close by.

"–_can't believe we just did all that for nothing!_" Remus was saying. "_What if he finds out it was us?_"

Blessing her good luck to have walking in on the conversation at that precise moment, Lily dashed back over to the steps before the boys could catch her snooping. Severus handed Lily her shoes, which he had just cleaned with a Scourgify charm. Lily smiled as she took them, but her thoughts were elsewhere. Why those boys needed to create such a disaster in the potions room was beyond her, but clearly they had been attempting to do something else more important. They had done it all for nothing, Remus had said. What had they actually wanted to do? She would have liked to discuss her thoughts with Severus, but she held her tongue, not wanting to add more fuel to the already raging fire. And in any case, Lily Evans was no sneak. No one had been hurt, and to be completely honest she was rather impressed by the extent of the magically induced chaos that the boys had produced. No, she would deal with this in her own way.

In fact, an opportunity to make a deal revealed itself two weeks later during a Transfiguration lesson. At the start of class, James had sat down next to Lily with a very determined look on his face and snapped at Mary, who had been about to sit there, to find another seat somewhere else.

As Lily made a movement to get up from her seat and join her friend elsewhere, she felt James put his hand on her arm.

"I need to talk to you," he said quietly, looking her dead in the eye.

"Well, you're off to a great start," she said sarcastically.

"Just listen," he said, still utterly serious. "Slughorn is having a thing – a get-together, or whatever you call it – this weekend. I need to go."

"And you want me to make that happen?" said Lily, raising an eyebrow.

"You can invite people, can't you?" he asked.

"Yes, but… why on earth would you want to go?" she asked, knowing full well how many times both Potter and Black had scoffed the idea of Slug Club and everything to do with it. "And what makes you think that Slughorn will let you near his office after what you did to his classroom?"

"He'll have no reason to protest to my being there if – er, not that I _did_ have anything to do with it, that is," he finished off slowly, though he had caught himself a little too late. "Besides, I'll be going with you, and he's not going to turn down the date of his favorite student."

"First thing's first, Potter – this would not be a date," Lily reprimanded, ignoring the compliment and hoping that James didn't notice that her face had flushed a bit. "And what makes you think I would even take you?"

"Several reasons come to mind. One being that most girls in this school would jump at the chance-"

"You need to get into his private stash, don't you?" Lily said, cutting him off. "Oh, don't look so surprised, I'm not an idiot. Cabinets don't just explode for no reason."

"Keep your voice down," James berated, darting his eyes around to make sure no one was within earshot.

"Why should I? Why would I possibly want to help you steal something that could just lead to another blown-up classroom? Nice going, by the way."

"Ok, bypassing this uncanny knowledge of my affairs, I do have something to offer you," said James.

"Oh?"

"Being seen at a party with me-"

"Ha!" Lily scoffed loudly.

"Fine. Forget that. What if I told you I could get you something you want in return?"

"Like what?" she coaxed.

"Ok," said James, considering. "You like Honeydukes? I can get you as much of your favorite stuff as you like."

"Seriously?" asked Lily dryly. "Candy? You're bribing me with _candy?_"

"Didn't mean to insult," said James, putting his hands up.

Lily was about to turn him away, but at that moment she caught sight of Severus walking into the classroom. He stared up at James and herself, saw them sitting very close together, and with a newly soured expression on his face he shuffled dejectedly to the back of the room to sit with Macnair and Crabbe. He had taken to hanging out with them whenever he found Lily in the presence of her Gryffindor friends. In truth, if she could ask for anything from Potter, it would be to find a way to stop this stupid Slytherin vs. Gryffindor rivalry he had going on…

"I have an idea," said Lily, suddenly struck by the possibility of the thought.

"Anything," he said eagerly.

"I want you to leave Severus alone," she said.

"Pardon?"

"Now, I'm not daft. I know I can't just expect you stop whatever rivalry you have going on with all of Slytherin forever. But if you can and your friends leave Severus alone for the rest of the semester, I'll get you into Slughorn's party."

"You've got to be joking," said James.

"Severus is my friend," said Lily flatly. "So, no, I'm not joking."

This struck a cord in James. Sure, he disliked Severus, but he had to admit that the bloke was one hell of a lucky guy to have a friend like Lily. And though he may not have understood a lot about the enigma that was Lily Evans, he could certainly respect her loyalty.

"And if you don't keep our deal until the end of the year, I _will_ go to Slughorn with what I know about the explosion in his classroom," she added, making sure that James understood all of her terms.

"You would never!" said James disbelievingly. "Gryffindor would lose the house cup for sure–"

"Maybe I would, maybe I wouldn't," said Lily teasingly. "Do you really want to take the chance?"

James mulled this over for a moment, and when he opened his mouth Lily was sure he was going to decline her offer.

"Ok," said James. "I'll do it."

"Well, that's too bad, because – what?" Lily faltered, not sure if she had heard him right.

"Ok," he repeated.

"Ok?"

"Ok."

"You're going to leave Severus alone?" she asked.

"As if he didn't exist," he said.

"For the rest of the year?"

"For the rest of the year."

Lily eyed him suspiciously.

"Whatever you need from Slughorn's office must be pretty important," she said.

"Not getting it isn't an option," said James flatly.

"And I don't suppose you're going to tell me _why_ you need whatever it is I'm helping you get?" she said.

"I don't remember that being a part of the deal," said James carefully.

He was right, and Lily didn't want to take a chance on the deal she'd miraculously been able to conjure up between them.

"Fine," she said. "Slughorn's party is this weekend. If you haven't gotten into a duel with Severus by then – wands or words, I don't care which – then I'll get you in. But that's with the understanding that you _keep_ leaving him alone for the rest of the year."

"You got it," said James, and they shook on it, with an air of near comical decorum, each equally skeptical of the other's intention to keep their word.

When Lily asked Severus casually come Friday if he had gotten into any tiffs with the Gryffindor's recently, his response was that he was even more suspicious of the boys' behavior towards him than ever. At first, Lily was bitterly disappointed, and was already thinking about how to confront James when Severus elaborated.

"I know they're planning something big, because they don't usually avoid me – usually Potter and Black go out of their way to pull out their wands on me in the corridor, but… I just wish I could figure out that they're playing at."

"So… they've been leaving you alone?"

"No, no you don't get it! They're planning something. I know they are. Like, the other day Potter was walking by a group of us in the hall – Macnair, Crabbe and me and a few other Slytherins – and Macnair started going on about the last Quidditch game, saying Potter had cheated him out of the last goal. Anyway, he went on and on and Potter just stood there, and then he turned to _me_, and you know what he said?"

"What?" asked Lily, growing concerned again.

"He asked me how _you _were doing. Yeah, then he said to tell you he said, 'Hi.' What's he playing at?"

"I don't know, Sev," said Lily, a little more surprised than she was pleased. "Maybe he just didn't want to start something."

"You weren't there, you didn't hear him," said Severus. "I was like he was rubbing something in my face. I just don't know what." He looked her over suspiciously, as if to ask if she were holding anything out on him that would explain Potter's inquirey after her.

"Me either," said Lily. She didn't feel very good about the lie, but also didn't know what good would come of telling Severus that she had struck a deal with James Potter over him. Especially one that involved accompanying him to a party. And that's when she realized that she had forgotten something very crucial in her plan.

"Oh, Severus, are you going to Slughorn's party tomorrow?" she asked, trying to sound as if it were a throwaway question.

"Oh, no, I… I…" Severus faltered. He would love to go to Slug's party with Lily, but he had plans with some of his Slytherin housemates that he couldn't back out of, and he didn't want to tell Lily that they were the reason why he had to ditch her tomorrow evening.

"Oh, ok, don't worry about it," she cut him off, relieved that she wouldn't have to play referee between Potter and Severus when she showed up the Slug's party with the former. I have plans. Just wondering."

"Well, how about after?" he asked. "We'll do something else to celebrate the end of the year."

"Sure," she said, smiling as she briefly squeezed his arm before walking off to find Potter.

Severus touched the spot on his arm where Lily had touched him as he watched her figure recede down the corridor. _Maybe tonight,_ he thought. _Maybe I'll tell her how I feel. Maybe she feels it, too._

On the night of the party, however, Severus's plans with his housemates fell through. Macnair, who was still bitter about the last game between Slytherin and Gryffindor, was planning on jumping the Gryffindor seeker, Christina Channi, in the corridor on her way back from her usual tutoring session at the library. But the lucky girl never showed, so Severus suddenly had an evening free and decided that, since Lily wasn't around either, he might as well go to Slughorn's last party of the year.

Needless to say, he had no words for what he saw when he walked into the enlarged office later that evening.

James bloody Potter was there. He was chatting it up with a group of people, looking pleased as could be, and when Severus walked over to find out how on earth he had gotten himself in, he saw Lily amongst the group.

She was _laughing_. She was actually _laughing_ at whatever it was that Potter was saying. She thought he was _funny_. He felt sick. He wanted to go over there and confront her, but part of him also felt like leaving before anyone noticed that he was there. Instead, he secluded himself to a corner of the room with a drink, deciding to wait until Lily was on her own before confronting her.

When he scanned the room for her a while later, however, Severus realized that neither Lily nor James were anywhere in sight. He took two turns around the room, and when he finally saw them emerge from a dark corner ten minutes later, James looked exceedingly happy. Severus even caught him wink at Lily as they sat back down near Slughorn, who was utterly engrossed in a story that he was telling his students and much too tipsy to give much notice to anything else. When James leaned closer to Lily to whisper something in her ear, and Lily giggled – actually _giggled_ – Severus had to leave. He didn't know that Lily had disappeared with James to get the key to Slughorn's closet and rob him of some adder's fork, a few bezoars, and a vial of ground pixie bones. He didn't know that what James was whispering in her ear was simply a joke about Slughorn's drunken demeanor. But it wouldn't have really made a difference if he had. The two of them together was bad enough. Exactly what James was saying didn't bother him as much as the fact that his lips were so close to Lily's ear.

Severus slammed his drink down on a nearby table, finally resolving to leave to party. But the sound had caught Lily's attention, for she looked up in the direction of the noise and saw Severus staring at her with eyes full of betrayal.

She ran after him, leaving James back at the party, confused as to why she had suddenly taken off without so much as a word to him. Had she really been that eager to leave him after she had gotten what he needed?

"Severus, wait! Please!" she shouted as she chased his receding figure down dungeon corridor. "Where are you going? Please, just let me talk to you!"

"I can't believe you actually went to Slughorn's party with _him!_ _We_ always go together! You told me you weren't going! Why would you lie?" Severus went on and on, finding it slightly easier to talk to her when he replaced his feelings of hurt with anger.

"It was a favor, Sev, that was all. I was doing him a favor. Look," she said, trying to figure out a way to explain everything so that he would listen. "We had this deal. I agreed to get him into the party if he did something for me."

"You _lied_ to me," Severus spat back. "You wouldn't have if there wasn't something else to hide. You didn't want me there."

"It's not that, and I _didn't_ lie, I just didn't mention it because I knew you'd react like – no," Lily stopped herself, her shoulders dropped under the weight of her blame. "No, you're right. I may not have said anything, but that's just as bad as lying. I'm sorry. I'm _sorry_, Sev."

"I just…" continued Severus, still not able to look her in the eye. "You'd really rather go with_ him_ than me?"

"_No_, Sev! That's not it at all! I told you, we had a deal – I was…" Lily came to a halt in her explanation. She knew Severus, so she knew that he wouldn't react well to knowing that the deal she had struck with Potter had been about protecting him from the big bad bullies. "Look," she started up again, finding a new approach. "I know you have this long-standing rivalry with most of Gryffindor, but don't you ever get tired of it, Sev? Don't you ever wonder why we all can't just _be?_"

You don't get it," snapped Severus. "You only see it that way because – because you didn't grow up in – you just don't understand the way it works in this world sometimes. It's _all _about whose side you're on–"

"I don't get it?" asked Lily, growing angry for the first time. "_I _don't get it? How _dare_ you, Severus. If I understand one thing about this world it's the rivalry. I see it every day, Sev, because in case you've forgotten, I'm muggleborn. There isn't a day that goes by where I'm not reminded by somebody that I'm different, that some people think I don't even belong. And you know – you _know _– that most of those people are _your_ friends. But have I ever cut you out for wanting to be with them? Have I ever tried to stop you from making your own choices? So _excuse_ me! I'm so sorry that I actually had fun with someone other than you for a change! You always do this, Sev! And not just with James Potter, but with Mary and Denise and everyone else I spend more than five minutes with! Am I just supposed to sit around by myself while you go off doing God knows what with your housemates? I understand perfectly well what your friends think of me, but I have _never_ tried to control you. And you _dare_ tell me that _I_ _don't get it?_"

"I… you… I don't… I could care less about your girlfriends! It's Potter-"

"Why are you so threatened by him Severus?" cried Lily in a last-ditch effort to get a straight answer out of him.

Severus, unable to fully comprehend what Lily just said, much less make any recognizable sounds come out of his mouth, simply stared at Lily as all the blood rushed out of his face.

"I… am not," he began to stutter, his voice barely above a whisper to stop himself from yelling at the top of his lungs. "I would never… you just… if you weren't so flighty-"

"Flighty?" Lily hissed. "That's a laugh coming from you."

Severus, if possible, turned even paler.

"Thanks for letting me know what you really think of me," Lily said, her voice shaking slightly. Before Severus could pull himself together, she turned on her heel and walked away from him, down the long corridor and around the corner. She didn't look back once.

Severus wasn't the only one that Lily had avoided for the remainder of the term. Though he hadn't done anything wrong – well, besides steal from Slughorn, but she didn't care about that – every time she looked at him she thought of her fight with Severus. At the very least she could be glad that he had indeed stuck to their deal until the end of the semester.

James, for his part, couldn't work out what had changed since Slug's party to suddenly make Evans even more distant from him than she had been before. He told himself that he shouldn't care, but it still bothered him. For the past three years, he and Evans had been like oil and water; they clashed whenever they came up against each other. But he had actually had _fun _with her last night. She had topped almost every quip he had made throughout the evening, had turned every dull conversation into a lively verbal match, and it quickly came to pass that they were talking to one another on their own, out of the buffering presence of a mass of people, and neither of them were any less comfortable for it. Now whenever he saw her in the Great Hall or before class or walking down a corridor, his mind instantly went solely to the idea of picking up where they had left off. He didn't know if he would really call his feelings toward Evans romantic, and she still puzzled him endlessly, but he did know that he found her fascinating and smart and funny and kind. But it seemed as though, whenever he did happen to catch her alone, she would actively try to avoid talking to him. What had he done wrong?

And what did Snivellus done right? This was what he had been asking himself ever since the night of Slug's party.

And now another semester was nearly at a close and James was no closer to finding an answer.

"Time's up, everyone!" Professor Slughorn boomed from the front of the classroom. "Bottle up your potions – and don't forget to tag them this time! I doubt you'll remember whose is who's when you come back from Christmas holiday!"

While most of the other students in their class scrambled to fit a few more ingredients into their potions, Lily and Severus tied tags onto their own flasks and walked up to the front of the classroom together to put them on Slughorn's desk.

"Looking forward to seeing what my two best students have managed, as usual!" Slughorn said, beaming at the two of them. Behind them, Sirius pretended to retch into his cauldron and James rolled his eyes so far up into his head that the backs of his eyeballs actually started to hurt.

"I swear, if Snivelly doesn't ask Evans to marry him one of these days, Slughorn will," Sirius said as he, James, Remus and Peter walked out of the classroom together.

Peter laughed heartily. Remus wrinkled his nose in slight disgust. James felt the same way that Remus did, but for the sake of his own pride he laughed feebly at the joke. He glanced back at Lily, who was now making her way up to the entrance hall with Snape some ways behind the boys, and tried to convince himself that he wasn't hurt by the fact that she would still rather hang around with that Slytherin brat than with… well, with him, for example.

"You alright, mate?" said Sirius suddenly, looking at James.

"Yeah," said James, coming out of his reverie. "Why?"

"You just looked all gloomy all of a sudden," said Sirius.

"Did I?" said James. "No, I'm just thinking. I just remembered that I haven't gotten my parents anything for Christmas yet," he lied, too prideful to admit that he might actually have feelings for a girl who didn't seem to like him back. "And we leave at the end of the week."

"Oh hey, that reminds me!" Sirius said, snapping his face back to normal. "I _will_ die if I have to spend all the holiday with _those people_," he said, and James, Remus and Peter knew him to be referring to his family. "They're gonna have the whole lot there this year. All my cousins, even the in laws-"

"Well, that'll mean Andromeda will be there, right?" asked Remus.

"Are you kidding? Her name hasn't been uttered in that house since she took off with that Tonks guy," said Sirius, referring to when the Black family found out last month that Andy was pregnant with a muggleborn's baby. "Actually, I should thank her. That debacle actually took some of the pressure of me for a while. So, no, I don't think she'll be showing up. Although, Uncle Alphard should be there, and he likes me. And he's so old and far gone that nobody really bothers to convince him that I'm scum."

"Well that's… good," said Remus, trying to be positive.

"You won't have to deal with any of it for long, mate," said James, getting back to the point. "You can spend the holiday with me. My parents have already said they don't mind picking you up. They don't want you taking the knight bus again – said it's dangerous or something. I don't know, they've never let me on it."

"They think the knight bus is dangerous, but they're willing to come directly to my _house_?" asked Sirius, half-amused by this conundrum. "Just do me a favor and let me know when they're coming so I can literally leave the second they get there."

"No problem," said James. "I'll write as soon as I get home."

Sirius smiled as the four boys made their way into the great hall for supper. Somehow, despite the fact that he knew he had to spend the beginning of the holiday with his own despicable family, he felt that he could get through it all if it meant spending the rest of Christmas with James and his parents.


	5. Another Christmas Come and Gone

**Chapter Five**

_Another Christmas Come and Gone_

"Sirius! Mother asked me to tell you that if you don't come downstairs she'll send father up here to drag you down!"

Sirius, who was sitting on his bed trying to think of more ways to procrastinate before going downstairs, rolled his eyes and let out an exasperated sigh.

"I'm coming, you twat!" he yelled at Regulus through his closed bedroom door. "Give me five minutes! Or would you all rather I grace our guests in my knickers?"

"Just delivering the message," Regulus responded through the door. Taking his wand out, he tapped the doorknob, and a second later it opened into Sirius's room. "I knew you already had your pants on," he said once he saw that Sirius was sitting on his bed, fully dressed and flipping through a photo album, of all things.

"Get out!" yelled Sirius, picking up one of his pillows and throwing it at Regulus.

"Why are you still up here?" Regulus asked, catching the pillow easily as flew at his head. "You've made it perfectly clear before you're not embarrassed about being the black sheep in the family – or red sheep, I should say," he added, looking around his brothers room, which was plastered from floor to ceiling with Gryffindor paraphernalia.

"I wouldn't expect you to understand," scoffed Sirius. "You're just like the rest of them, now, aren't you?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Regulus incredulously. "You're the one who had to go and get yourself sorted the wrong way, and now you're acting like it's our fault. Maybe if you tried to be a part-"

"This is so much bigger than Hogwarts houses, Regulus. This started long before all of that," said Sirius, growing more irritated by the second. "Don't pretend like you don't know that."

"What I know," said Regulus slowly, taking a few more steps into Sirius's room, "is that if you don't get your act together, Mother and Father will be the least of your problems. There's a whole host of people out there – and you know I don't just mean downstairs – who you're just begging to get on the wrong side of."

"This is bullshit," mumbled Sirius, getting up from the bed to put the album back on his dresser.

"So that's what family tradition is to you now?" said Regulus scathingly, turning to leave. "Good to know."

"And what exactly do you think it means, Regulus?" Sirius retorted. "Behind all that very proud and important talk of preserving tradition and wizarding values, what do you think it all really means? No – you know what? Don't answer that. I'd rather think you didn't know. It's better than you knowing and being ok with it all."

Regulus, who had stopped on his way out of the room at Sirius's words, considered his brother. "You know, maybe if you weren't so resentful about being placed wrong, you wouldn't be so _paranoid_ about everything Mother and Father say-"

"For Merlin's sake, where the hell did you get house placement out of _that_, Reg?" yelled Sirius. "And I'm not paranoid, thank you very much. Now will you do me a favor and get out of my sight? You can tell Mother I'll be down as soon as I've made my tie." Snatching his tie from his bed, he walked over the stand up mirror in the corner and began to tie it with such ferocity it looked as though he were attempting so strangle himself.

"Whatever," said Regulus, growing tired of having this conversation with his brother. "But you can do _me_ a favor by trying not to embarrass me in front of my friends like you so love to do at school. Or I _will_ get Father involved."

"Ooh, I'm _soooo_ scared," muttered Sirius, eyeing Regulus's retreating figure through the mirror. He paused to look at himself in the mirror once he finished with his tie. _I really do look like them, now_, he thought to himself, eyeing his grimly regal attire with disgust. Catching his expression in the mirror once his eyes moved back up to his face, Sirius recoiled slightly – he had looked almost exactly like his father, who constantly had a look of disgust plastered on his pale face. For some reason, this made Sirius think of James, of whom he was perpetually jealous because of his wonderful relationship with his own parents. He wondered what his best friend was doing at that very moment, and found himself imagining James opening his Christmas presents with his parents in the warmth of their sitting room, the lot of them laughing together, loving each other, smiling as if there weren't a care in the world… and there were Remus and Peter, stopping by to enjoy the fun, and none of them were giving a thought to were poor old Sirius was, not bothering to write him a single, solitary letter, even though they all promised they'd see him on Christmas–

"_SIRIUS BLACK!_"

"Coming!" Sirius yelled, his voice a little higher than usual from the shock of the booming voice that had echoed up the stairs, shaking him out of his reverie.

"_If I have to tell you again_–" his father continued, but Sirius interrupted as he thundered down the stairs.

"I'm _coming_, I said. I already told Regulus I just needed to make up my–"

"I don't care what you were doing, just get in there before your mother runs up the stairs in a rage," Orion said in a voice of forced calm.

There were a number of things that Sirius would have liked to say to this, but for the sake of his own hide he kept his mouth shut and walked from the dimly lit landing into the parlor, where his family and their guests were gathered. Sirius's first thought when he entered the room was that only someone like his mother could make a place look so dim and depressing on Christmas. His second thought was that he was growing rather hungry. He eyed the platters of appetizers on the table, which was surrounded by a throng of aunts and uncles, and decided that he would rather starve than chance a surprise interrogation. Instead, he began to scan the room for the darkest corner he could find, planning to wait there until everyone made their way into the dining room for supper.

"Hello, Sirius."

_Oh, hell_, Sirius thought, cringing as he turned around to face his cousin.

"Evening, Bella," he replied.

Bellatrix stared down at Sirius, a smirk playing on her handsome face, indicating that she had probably just been talking about him. Sirius was still trying to figure out exactly why, but something about Bellatrix still freaked him out even after all of these years. There was something sinister about her countenance, so that even when she appeared to possess the upmost grace, she still gave off the impression that she might cut your throat at the slightest provocation. Somehow, seeing her dressed up in formal attire tonight made her seem all the more savage. Half of her long, luxurious black hair was clipped back while the rest cascaded down her shoulders. She wore a pale dress that made her skin look even whiter than usual. In her left hand she held a glass of wine, and as she brought the glass up to her lips to take a sip, a glint on her finger caught Sirius's eye – a diamond ring.

"Have you seen my ring yet?" she asked him, holding the hand with the wine glass out to him for a better look.

"You know I haven't, Bella," Sirius said, taking a glass of firewhisky from the silver platter Kreature was carrying just as it passed by his waist. He took a great, long draft before continuing. "I wasn't invited to the wedding, remember?" he said as the strength of the drink filled his chest, making him feel a bit pluckier.

"Oh, that's right," Bellatrix said, smiling as she took another slow sip of wine. Sirius tightened his jaw, reminding himself that he would get through the evening much quicker if he didn't allow himself to get provoked. But Bellatrix had a knack for rubbing him the wrong way. She took such joy in sucking every last drop of vigor out of him that her glass might as well have been filled with his own blood. "You understand, I'm sure. Tradition is very important to Rasbatan, and to me."

"Trust me, I was hardly upset," Sirius said. This was true, although the same couldn't be said for his parents. However, it was not Bellatrix that they took issue with on this matter. It was Sirius. Bellatrix had knowingly poured salt on an old wound by reminding her aunt and uncle that the embarrassment of their older son's behavior wasn't forgotten among the rest of the family. Sirius had received quite a bit of grief from both his parents about this, despite the fact that he reminded them over and over again that he couldn't control who Bellatrix wanted at her wedding. He had finally managed to get them off his back when he suggested that Bellatrix was being hypocritical, as her own sister had run off with a muggleborn not too long before her engagement. In fact, Sirius was half-convinced that Bella's parents had arranged their eldest daughter's marriage in order to help clear up their pureblood name after Andromeda had so suddenly tainted it.

"Heard from Andy lately?" Sirius asked Bellatrix, deciding that if she really wanted to get into a discussion about black sheep, he would indulge her. "Still with that Tonks fellow? What am I talking about, she must be! I heard she was expecting not too long ago. Congrats, Bella. Never thought you'd have muggle blood in the family, did you?"

Bellatrix's expression was suddenly riddled with anger and disgust, and her face seemed to grow – if possible – even paler, with – Sirius noted with delight – the slightest tinge of green.

"Yes, I suppose you would like to talk about Andromeda, Sirius," she said. "It would certainly take some of the pressure off you. I only hope your brother doesn't one day have to suffer the same embarrassment I did by having a sibling desert the family. Speaking of Regulus, I see that he has some of his school friends here. Did you not invite any of yours?" She raised her glass to her lips once more, but paused and set it down again as a thought appeared to dawn on her face. "Oh, no, I forgot – the Lupin boy probably couldn't afford a decent set of dress robes, let alone a school uniform that doesn't look like it was from the homeless bin. Oh, and then there's the Potter boy, but I'm sure he wouldn't want to be here, with his own kind. The Potters are such pureblood nihilists they would probably hate this kind of sophistication. My, Sirius, you do know how to pick your friends. If I were you I would go over there with Regulus and try to salvage some of his company for yourself."

Sirius, for the majority of the time that Bellatrix was speaking, had been content to let her prattle on until she was satisfied and leave it at that. Years of experience had taught him that if he just let her taunts fall upon deaf ears, she would simply walk away after a while and that would be the end of it. The last time Sirius had allowed her taunts to provoke him beyond restraint, he had been seven years old, and had ended up hanging by his ankles outside of their fourth story window. This time, however, she wasn't just taunting Sirius. This time she chose to bring his friends into it – a thought that made Sirius grip his empty glass so tightly he was sure it would shatter.

"They're not nihilists, _Bella_," he said, spitting out her name as though it were poison. His voice shook with anger even as he forced it to remain calm. "They don't _hate _purebloods. People like you just call them that to justify your own hatred of muggles."

Bellatrix looked as though she was about to say something, but Sirius barreled on.

"It's very clever, I'll give you that. You make it seem like anyone who doesn't share your anti-muggle sentiments is out to destroy all of wizarding kind. You make everyone else seem like the nihilists when really it's you. That much I get, but I've always wanted to know something, so indulge me; do you turn the blame on everyone else because you know you're so full of hate and you don't want people to see it, or are you just that ignorant that you really believe every idiotic word that comes out of your fat mouth? I don't know which one's worse, but I'd honestly like to have your perspective on the matter."

Sirius looked at Bella with mild thoughtfulness, as though he had just asked about her thoughts on the weather. Inside, however, he was burning with satisfaction. Much of what he had just said he had paraphrased from Mrs. Potter, whom he had heard talk at length about the reverse psychological concept last summer. Suddenly he felt almost as if she were there with him at that very moment, a firm hand on his shoulder, staring daggers at Bellatrix, protecting him as if he were her own son.

Bella took a deep breath. "Well, I suppose you know you've hit rock bottom when you're projecting your own nihilism onto other people's moral values," she said. Though this was _exactly_ what Sirius had just said, he knew she wasn't referring to herself. "Next you'll be saying that practicing magic is racist, and we should all just throw out our wands and labor around with the scum of the earth themselves."

"So, I'm gonna go with option number two, then," said Sirius, his voice growing louder to drown out the ringing that was developing in his ears. "You're just too damn stupid to hear your own hypocrisy even as it flies out of your ugly-"

_WHACK!_

Suddenly, all Sirius could see was a bright, white light as something hard came down on the back of his head. Before he could fully regain his vision, he felt someone tug at his ear and lead him abruptly out of the parlor and into the drawing room. Behind him, Sirius could hear Bellatrix's laughter.

His ear was released, and a moment later he heard the drawing room door close so that all sound from the parlor was suddenly shut out. He stared at his mother as she swooped up to him and swiftly shoved his shoulder down so that he fell into the armchair behind him. For a moment, Sirius thought she was going to hit him, but a moment later she swept herself away to the windows lining the right side of the room. Sirius was left staring at the tapestry on the wall before him, and found that all of the portraits were glaring down at him, with the exception of his own and uncle Alphard's, the former looking highly uncomfortable while the latter seemed completely oblivious to what was going on. Two spots down from his own portrait, Bellatrix was wearing a look of highly satisfied conviction as she looked from him to her sister, Andromeda – or, rather, what was left of Andromeda's portrait. Sirius's father had burned a hole straight through her face the day it was discovered that she had run off with a muggleborn.

"I honestly don't know what to do at this point, Sirius," his mother said quietly as she stared out the window, down at the empty street. "I've tried appealing to you on every level that I can possibly imagine, not only for the sake of this family, but for your own sake, as well. But time and time again you show that you don't give a damn about this family. I can't understand it. I really can't. I've wondered who to blame, wondered where the origin of this behavior began, but I'm at a loss. Your father and I have done nothing but care for you and your brother, given you everything you could have asked for… But then your house placement at school… Well, something must have happened before then, because you weren't sorted at random. Yet ever since then you have become more and more destructive to this family. And I am tired, Sirius, of trying to figure out why. So please, will you not tell me why you feel so obligated to destroy everything that is important to me?"

Sirius sat slouched in his chair in silence, saying nothing. This was certainly a rare move from his mother – rather than chastising him openly with insults and punishments, she was trying to guilt him into feeling sorry for his behavior. She was actually playing the victim. _The wonders never cease_, he thought with such bitterness that he had to push back the tears as they welled in his eyes. He would have liked very much to reply, but he could think of nothing to say that wouldn't make matters worse for himself.

Walburga seemed to sense this and asked, "Do you have no remorse, Sirius?"

Still he said nothing. He was barely breathing at this point.

"What is that matter with you?" Walburga said, her voice growing slightly louder, more hysterical. "Who is putting this mendacity in your head? It's that Potter family, isn't it? You spend entirely too much time around their boy – I don't care if you're in the same house. And I wouldn't be half so concerned if you weren't writing them practically every other day – what on earth your could have to talk about that requires that many letters I have no idea-"

"How's it your business who I write to and how often?" Sirius asked, practically shouting at his mother's intrusion on his personal habits and temporarily forgetting her quick temper. "I mean," he said, quieting his tone. "I don't see what that has to do with this conversation."

"It has everything to so with this conversation, Sirius, because this conversation is about where your loyalties lie, and the kind of… of propaganda that renegades like _that family_ might be putting in your head. If I thought it were at all possible I'd have had you taken out of that house and put in Slytherin where you belong a long time ago – although to be honest I'm starting to wonder if that _is _where you belong-"

"So if it doesn't coincide with your agenda, it's propaganda," said Sirius, talking over his mother, "but if Regulus parrots something you believe in without really understanding it, that's ok?" Sirius mumbled, terrified of how his mother would react but compelled to say it nonetheless. He closed his eyes, trying to imagine Mrs. Potter standing over his shoulder once again as he listened to the sound of quick footsteps striding towards him.

"Let me tell you something," whispered Walburga, her face so close to her son's that Sirius could feel her breath, and he squinted his eyes shut even more fervently. "I don't know what it will take at this point to make you see straight, but you had better pray that you're not a bad influence on your brother, because if you think I'm angry now-"

"I don't think you have to worry about Regulus, mother," Sirius said, his eyes still closed, wishing it would all just go away as easily as he had closed his eyes. "I doubt anything I do will dirty the brain you've so meticulously washed."

He was brought swiftly back to reality when Walburga's palm made contact with the side of his face, and white-hot pain suddenly seared through his cheek as his head was jerked to the side. He didn't move. He didn't speak. He was far too tired of this to react anymore.

"You think this is a joke, Sirius, but it's not. I am trying to protect you and your brother, to raise you properly, and you think it's a joke-" she broke off, as her voice had started to shake. She brought a hand to her mouth and turned away from Sirius, facing the window once again. Sirius clenched his jaw and fought back the tears, but not because he felt guilty. It was because he was tired, and because he already knew what was going to happen next. She had gone through the list of tactics as she always did: intimidation, fear, guilt, and next up was embarrassment. She would start talking about the people in the other room, telling Sirius that he wasn't just embarrassing the family, but also himself, even if he didn't know it. And even though this was exactly how it happened whenever they had a row, every time Sirius would think to himself, _God I hope I'm wrong. I'd give anything to be wrong. This time will be different. This time she won't care more about what other people think than she does about how I feel. She'll act like my MOTHER for a change_. Then he'd think about Christmases long past, before Sirius grew to know his parents for who they truly were, when his mother would hold him in her arms while he and Regulus opened presents, and he'd suddenly feel sick thinking about it, because it reminded him of how cold and empty he was now without those arms around him, without that blissful ignorance. _Maybe that's why I act like such a child, _he thought with bitter humor.

"-impossible to get any of this through your head, Sirius."

Sirius looked up, realizing that his mother had started talking again.

"Ok, mother. You're right. I'm sorry," said Sirius in a tone of mock compliance. "I probably shouldn't even be down here with everyone if I'm just going to embarrass you. I'll just go up to my room now, so you can get back to your glittering circle of friends."

"You know what, Sirius? Fine," snapped Walburga. "Fine. If that's the way you really feel, that's fine! Go upstairs! Be alone – on Christmas – for the rest of the night. If being a part of this family is so repulsive to you, then you don't have to be."

Sirius got up from his chair and started walking towards the door, but Walburga kept talking.

"Go! Just go upstairs, and stay in your room, and we'll all just ignore you for the rest of the night. I wouldn't be surprised if no one even asks where you are. Maybe then you'll think a little but harder about-"

But what he was to think a bit harder about Sirius was not to know, as he had walked through the door and slammed it shut again before his mother could finish her sentence.

The only worrying thought in Sirius's head was that he might run into his father before he reached the stairs. Making his way through the throng of people to the landing, however, was easier than he thought, as the sitting room was dimly lit and most of the guests were deep in conversation in small groups scattered throughout the room. Once he was out of sight of everyone in the house, he bounded up the stairs and into his room. He didn't waste any time grabbing his coat out of the closet and prying open his bedroom window, as he had worked out what he was going to about halfway through Walburga's speech. Being practiced in sneaking out of his window by levitating himself to the ground made the escape quick and easy. He could have cared less about the laws against the use of underage magic at that point.

Once he got the sidewalk, he stuck his right arm out and less than five seconds later the purple three-decker bus that he was so familiar with from all his impromptu trips to the Potter's house was rearing dangerously up the street and screeching to a halt in front of him.

* * *

"_Of all the wizards I've known (and I've known some)_

_Until I first met you I was lonesome_

_But then you waved your wand, dear, and charmed my heart_

_And ever since then we ain't been apart!_

_You're a magic man, I have to admit you_

_Deserve expressions that really fit you_

_So I've pensived my brain hoping to explain_

_Bei mir bist du schoen, Oh yes indeed_

_Bei mir bist du schoen, yes I'll explain_

_It means you're the only incantation I need–"_

"_Oof!_ Other way, dear! It's called a hammerlock, not a headlock!"

"Ack! Oof – wait–"

"Other way, other way!" Eedris Potter called through her laughter over the over the blaring music. She and her son had been dancing in the sitting room, Mrs. Potter instructing James on how to perform a swing properly, when James had turned the wrong way mid-spin, resulting in a knot of arms that now connected him to him mother in an awkward manner.

"Remember, it's slow, slow, quick, quick, slow," Eed repeated.

"That's what I'm doing!" James shot back, though he was laughing just as hard.

"Alright, alright, move aside, son," said Mr. Potter, getting up from his armchair by the gramophone. "Here's how it's done."

James stepped back and watched his father take his mother's hand and begin to lead her in the dance. Though they picked up with the same jazzy tune to which James and his mother had just been doing a lively swing, James's father led with gentile, fluid, unhesitating movements that made the dance unprecedentedly romantic. George always conducted himself, both physically and in speech, with steady deliberation and quiet grace, mannerisms that had developed from serving as a healer on deployed mission to Eastern Europe during the Great War on Grindelwald, where keeping calm and maintaining a steady hand under great pressure was essential to saving lives. Sometimes James wished that he could be more like his father: calm, cool, and deliberated. In some instances he was, but on the whole he was much more like his mother, who was exactly the opposite in almost every way. She had been a refugee and later an Auror during the Great War, where her experience had taught her the value of relentless ferocity in battle. Eedris and James were incredibly reckless, unpredictable, and sharp of tongue, but fortunately these traits were accompanied by a remarkably high level of intelligence that allowed them to find their way out of sticky situations as easily as they got themselves into them.

James watched at the two swayed around the room, their movements complementing each other perfectly. He found himself wondering just how lucky he was to have parents like his, who at their age still had as much passion for each other as they did when they were newlyweds. It was more than he could say for some couples. Sirius's parents, for example. It was a very poorly kept secret that Mr. and Mrs. Black only remained together out of pride. Part of the reason why Sirius came to stay with the Potters so often during holidays was to escape getting caught in the middle of his parent's passive aggressive battles of will. Why Sirius had apparently chosen to stay at his parent's house for the holiday, then, was a complete mystery to James, who had been looking forward to having someone else around for the holidays this year.

Most years it was just James and his parents. It had been that way ever since he was three years old, when his aunt Berna, Eedris's older sister and only remaining relative, had passed away. The rest of Eedris's family had died many years ago, casualties in Great War. George, meanwhile, had been an only child like James, and his parents had died of dragon pox many years ago, back before anyone had discovered a cure for the disease. So, the holidays were usually very small, intimate affairs. James was used to this, though, having grown up with little more than his parents for company until he began school at Hogwarts. Before then, the only time he ever got to socialize was at parties thrown by his parent's friends, most of whom were, like the Potters, very well-off. However, due to the unusually large age difference between him and his parents, James rarely met anyone close to his own age at these soirées. One of the exceptions was Ellie Cheswick, who was only a year older than James and whose family had known the Potters for years. But James hadn't seen her, her mother or her younger sister since their father's funeral, as Ellie had not returned to Hogwarts last semester.

A knock on the door roused James from his thoughts.

"Who could that be?" said Mrs. Potter, stopping mid-twirl to crane her head in the direction of the foyer.

"I'll get it," said James, striding up to the front door. Flinging it open, he gave a start when he saw Sirius standing on the front porch looking disheveled and slightly erratic.

"Sirius!" cried James, his face breaking into a smile for half a second before his brow began to furrow as he began to recognize a look of hot annoyance on his best friend's face. "Err – what are you… I mean, come in."

"Gee, thanks," said Sirius shortly.

"Er… no problem" James said as he stepped aside to let Sirius in.

"What happened?" Sirius asked once James had closed the door.

"I should be asking you that," asked James. "You never wrote back to either of my letters."

"_I _never – no," said Sirius, taken aback. "No – I wrote you. _You _never wrote back."

"Well if you did, I never got them," said James, quickly growing annoyed by Sirius's accusatory tone.

"What?"

"What's going on in there? James? Who's at the door?"

"Nothing, Mum – I mean, it's Sirius," James called down the hall.

"Oh, so he did decide to come for Christmas! Lovely!"

"This doesn't make any sense," said Sirius. "You never got any of my letters?"

"You know, this isn't the first time this has happened," said James. "Remember at the beginning of the year? You said you never got the letters I sent you about the anim – er," James paused, glancing down the hall towards the living room. "About the Wonderland stuff. At the time I thought it was just some random thing, but–"

"But it doesn't seem so random now," Sirius finished for him. "Are you sure Pan's not going a bit loopy?"

"She gets to everyone else just fine," said James a little defsively.

"Ok, ok, just saying," said Sirius.

"Do you think that–"

"James? Sirius? Are you still there? What are you up to?"

"Coming, Mum! Come on," he said to Sirius, and the two started down the hall.

"Hey, Mum? Did you remember getting any mail from Sirius? Something you might have forgot about?"

"What are you suggesting? That I'm senile?"

"No," said James, rolling his eyes as he and Sirius entered the living room. "It's just that–"

"Sirius!" called Mrs. Potter, cutting her son off as she flew towards Sirius and wrapped him in a tight hug. "How are you, dear?"

"'M doin' all right, Mrs. P," said Sirius.

"I'm so glad you're here," she said, releasing Sirius from her arms to have a look at him. "I didn't think we'd have the pleasure of seeing you in person today. We thought you'd forgotten us!"

"Never," Sirius said warmly, his spirits lifting upon the sight of her gleaming eyes and open arms. "Oh, and Merry Christmas."

"Your parents don't mind that you've gone to spend Christmas day without them, Sirius?" said Mr. Potter.

"Oh, they…" began Sirius, wondering if he should lie or not. "We were having a get-together, but they told me I could leave." More like gave him a time-out, but whatever.

"Well, that's marvelous," said Mr. Potter from his armchair near the fireplace. "I was under the impression that your mother didn't much care for us."

"George!" chided Mrs. Potter.

"Just being honest."

"Oh my god," said Sirius, his eyes growing wide as a look of realization dawned upon his face.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Sirius. I thought you knew," said Mr. Potter.

"No, it's not that, I… my mother…" he said, half-whispering.

"What about her, Sirius?" asked Mrs. Potter.

"She took them," said Sirius softly. "She_ took_ my letters. That's how she knew – and she must have been intercepting yours, two!" He knew this to be true; it was so obvious now. He only wondered how he hadn't figured it out before. He couldn't even be angry, really, because if he had to be completely honest with himself, he should have expected just as much from her.

"Oh, Sirius," said Mrs. Potter. "Why would your mother do such a thing?"

"She's done a lot worse, believe me," Sirius responded, not looking her in the eye, hoping she wouldn't ask him to clarify why his mother would want to intercept letters between him and James. He didn't want to have to explain to the Potters what his mother thought of them.

"Well," said Mrs. Potter, ending an awkward pause. "That's not important now, I suppose. What matters is that you're here now. I was just about to make some tea. Would you like a cup?"

"Yes, please," said Sirius, hoping that Mrs. Potter would understand from his expression just how grateful he was that she had decided not to dwell on the topic. Her warm expression and the light touch on his arm as she went into the kitchen told him that she did.

Mr. Potter looked back and forth from James to Sirius for a moment before getting up out of his chair.

"Well, I'll go join your mother," he said. "Good to see you, Sirius," he added, clapping him lightly on the shoulder as he walked by.

Once the boys were left alone, Sirius sank into one of the closest armchairs.

"What am I gonna do now?" he said. "I already know it won't matter if I tell her off – the most that'll happen is I'll get punished for mouthing off and she'll just keep intercepting and I'm _never_ gonna be able to keep in touch with you when I'm at home and–"

"Ok, I'm gonna stop you right there," said James, putting his hands up, "and just say that I am the greatest person in the universe, because I already know how we're going to get around that."

"How's that, exactly?" said Sirius, still sounding miserable.

"I'll show you," said James. He began to lead Sirius up the stairs to his room when another knock sounded from the front door.

"I'll get it!" James called to his parents, and he bounded down the stairs again. "Just a second, Sirius!"

Opening the door to their second visitor of the evening, James received yet another pleasant surprise when he found himself face to face with–

"Alice!" he cried, looking her up and down. "Haven't seen you in ages! Merry Christmas!"

"Hey, James," she said, though she appeared distracted as she peered past him into the house. "Are your parents around?"

"Yeah, they're in the kitchen," he said, furrowing his brow.

"Ok, thanks," she said, stepping past him without another word.

James watched her disappear down the hall and into the kitchen.

"Merry Christmas, James. You're looking well. May I come in? Please and thank you," muttered James as he closed the front door.

"Alice!" cried Mrs. Potter delightedly when she turned and saw Alice coming through the kitchen.

"Hello, Eedris," said Alice with barely any enthusiasm, closing the door that led into the kitchen.

"Is something the matter, my dear?" said Mr. Potter from his seat at the kitchen table. "You've not had an argument with Frank, have you? The holidays have a special way of making loved ones rub each other the wrong way–"

"It's not that, it's…" Alice paused. "It's about what you asked me to look into. Over the summer."

Without so much as a word, Mrs. Potter immediately put the cup that she was holding down on the counter and hastened over to the kitchen door. She checked briefly to make sure that neither James nor Sirius was listening on the other side. Once she was satisfied, she closed the door again and turned back to Alice, her face pale.

"Alright," she said, gripping her hands together. "What is it? What did you find out?"

"I think you were right to be suspicious of the healers who looked after James," said Alice.

Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Potter said a word, but their jaws were clenched and they were both considerably paler now.

"There have been several similar cases of memory loss, both from recent patients of the hospital and a few other cases that were otherwise thought to be isolated."

"But – but _why?_" asked Mrs. Potter, almost at a loss for words. "Why would anyone… he was there from a flying accident, for Merlin's sake!"

"I've thought about that," Alice continued. "Have you ever thought… is it possible that it _wasn't_ an accident? That maybe someone wanted him there?"

George and Eedris glanced at each other before answering.

"The thought occurred to us," said George. "But only for a moment, because again we had to ask ourselves why, and we had no answer."

"The only thing that makes sense is that they saw something," said Alice.

"They?" said George and Eedris.

"Ellie Cheswick was reported to have had some memory problems, too," said Alice. "And there are other cases that I mentioned. I don't know what they could have seen, but considering that it's memory lapses we're dealing with, it's the only thing that makes sense. They just don't know what it could be – the Aurors, I mean. They say if we can figure out what it was they saw, even just a clue, then we can connect all the cases and move forward from there. Whatever it is, what we know for sure is that there are people at Saint Mungo's who are in on it. Maybe not the whole hospital, but a good part of it. Things have been shifty ever since Nostrum was appointed head of the board."

The three of them remained in silence for a good long while before one of them spoke again.

"Is James going to be alright?" asked Mr. Potter.

"The Aurors say there's nothing to suggest anything sinister beyond the memory wiping," said Alice. "And I believe them. Whoever did it wouldn't want to leave any kind of a trail to connect their victims – that's why it's been so difficult to connect even what we've managed to thus far. That's actually why Moody has been so interested in James's case, since he _was _injured. He says that the physical trauma might have left him with a better chance at remembering what really happened."

"And that's why you're here?" said George. "To ask him what he knows? Alice, we haven't told him anything about our concerns. He has no idea that you're even looking into him–"

"Does he know anything about your suspicions of the hospital?" asked Alice.

"Only in the most general sense," said George. "Not in any way that concerns his visit there."

"We just don't see the sense in worrying him without knowing more," said Eedris. "Alice, do you think that whatever went on there… could it have anything to do with Henry Cheswick's murder?"

"It's complicated. Most people are still saying it was a suicide–"

"Please, Alice, don't spare us," said Eedris. "We need to know."

Alice sighed, looking down at the floor as she answered.

"There's a distinct possibility," she said. "So if you can tell me anything that he's said about what he remembers from that day, it would really help us out."

"As far as we know, he remembers nothing more than what he did the last time we talked to you," said George. "We only just asked him last week if he remembered anything else, but we'll ask again, either tonight or tomorrow, and let you know."

"George – George, check the door," said Mrs. Potter suddenly, her eyes growing wide. She had thought she heard the sound of a floorboard creaking out in the hall.

Mr. Potter swiftly opened the door, and both he and his wife gave a sigh of relief when they saw that there was no one on the other side.

In fact, James had been so eager to show Sirius what he had gotten him for Christmas – not just because it was unbelievably cool, but also because Sirius seemed to be in a particularly bad mood and needed some cheering up right away – that he hadn't stuck around to see what Alice had wanted with his parents.

While James dug under his bed for the package he had stashed there earlier that week, Sirius looked around the comfy little room. Not much had changed from the last time Sirius had been there, besides the addition of a few more foldouts of the Old Sarum Satyrs tacked up on the walls, cut out from monthly editions of_ International Quidditch League Magazine_. Amongst them, Sirius noticed a black and white picture of a single member of the team, Angela Garfield, waving enthusiastically at the camera. Scrawled across the lower right corner of the picture was a signature in purple ink, the team's color.

"You got Angela Garfield's autograph?" Sirius asked wildly, striding over to the photograph for a closer look.

"Yeah, it was in my Christmas card this year," said James. "Dad even got her to write it out to me. See?"

"You lucky bastard," said Sirius.

"Anyway, here you go," said James, extending a thin, rectangular package out to Sirius. "Careful with it. It's kind of fragile."

"Oh, shit," said Sirius, looking at the package.

"Ok... That's not exactly the reaction I was expecting," said James a bit confusedly. "You haven't even opened it yet."

"I left yours at my house, mate," he explained.

"What do you think I'm gonna do, hold yours out until I get mine?" asked James. "Just open it."

Sirius took the package. It was heavier than he expected it to be – from the size and shape he had been expecting a book. Needless to say he was relieved to find that he was wrong. He tore the parchment wrapping off carefully and to his surprise, when he looked down at what was in his hands, he saw himself.

"Oh," he said, trying to sound more enthusiastic than he was. "A mirror. Wow, that's… do you really think I'm that vain?"

"It's not to look at _yourself _with," said James, rolling his eyes as if Sirius had suggested something very silly indeed.

"Oh, my mistake. Of course not."

"Look, you know how McGonagall always puts us in separate detentions to make absolutely sure we don't have a good time when we're cleaning slug juice off the dungeon floors?"

"Yeah," said Sirius, not sure what this had to do with the gift in his hands.

"Well now we can talk to each other wherever we are," said James. He went to his dresser and opened the top drawer, pulling out mirror identical to the one he had given Sirius. "It's a two-way mirror. I found it in the pawnshop that we overheard Zonko talking about last time we were in Hogsmeade. You just say the name of the person who has the other mirror, and they appear in yours. Try it."

"Ok… er, _James Potter_," said Sirius, looking from the mirror to James a bit skeptically as he spoke. When he looked back down at the mirror, however, he saw not himself, but an image of James as if he were looking up at him from about two feet below his head, as James was holding his own mirror down my his waist. "Cool!" he exclaimed. "I can see right up your nose!" He heard an echo as he spoke and realized that he was hearing himself through the other mirror. James turned the mirror towards Sirius so that he could see, and Sirius saw a projection of his own face as it would have appeared in the mirror he held in his own hands.

"You see?" said James. "Now it doesn't even matter about the letters."

"Unless you count the principal of the thing," said Sirius, his expression falling from delight to discouragement in record time. "But you're right," he sighed, dropping himself onto James's bed. "It _doesn't _matter, because no matter what I say to that woman, she's not gonna change. You have no idea how lucky you are, James. You have no idea what it's like not to even feel wanted in your own home. I might as well stay here forever. I wonder if they'd even give a hoot."

"Sirius, don't say that," said James consolingly. "No matter what happens, they're still you family."

"Good thing no one else is here," said Sirius. "Someone might mistake you for being sensitive."

James gave him a small smile, but he made no retort, which told Sirius that he was in one of his extremely rare serious moods.

"Even if that is the way you feel about your parents," James continued, "there's still your brother. I remember you telling me when we were in first year that you thought he might get sorted into Gryffindor with you. Didn't you say you two used to get along?"

"Used to," said Sirius gravely. "I dunno. He's changed ever since he realized how much more appreciated he is at home because of my black sheep status in the family. Most of the time, James, I feel like I don't even know him at all."

"Most of the time, Severus, I feel like I don't even know her at all."

Lily was sitting on her bed, staring down at an old photo album of her and her sister from the sixties. It was late on Christmas day, and the Evans family was done celebrating with Mrs. Evans's Great Aunt and her extended family, so Lily had invited Severus to come over. She knew he mustn't have been having a very good time at his parent's house, holiday or no holiday. It turned out that she was right, though Severus had spared her the details; Severus's mother had given her a new set of potion vials for Christmas this year, but her husband immediately began arguing with her once he realized that the gift was strictly for magical purposes. He was already somewhat drunk at this point, and this led to him shouting at his son that if he really needed magic to make his Christmas worthwhile, then he surely didn't want anything that his muggle father had given him. In his half-drunken rage, he had managed to smash all of the vials that Severus's mother had bought. With that, he had thrown out all of the remaining gifts and resigned himself to his usual spot on the living room couch in front of the television for the rest of the day while Eileen shut herself up in her room. Severus had tried to come in and console her, but she wasn't in the mood to talk. In fact, she became angry with her son for openly favoring her gift over his father's. It was with great willingness, then, that he accepted Lily's invitation to join her at her house. Though his experience with his muggle father left Severus disinclined to associate with muggles in general, he made an exception in order to spend more time with Lily. He understood Lily to be in a similar position as he was at home, if no quite as bad, and therefore he felt that it was his duty to remind her how much better she was than the rest of her family.

"Just remember – you're so much better than she is," said Severus, leaning up against her dresser, watching her flip through the album from across the room. "You're special. Don't even think about her."

"Oh, Sev, that's not right," said Lily, closing the album. "I don't think I'm _better_ than anyone–"

"But you are," said Severus.

Lily looked up and gave Severus a sad little smile.

"I'm not going to pretend that I'm not flattered," she said, and Severus blushed. "But it's still not right. I'm not better than her because of my magic. Saying that would be no different from saying that purebloods are better than muggleborns. You know, now that I think of it, I'd love to see the look on Krink's face if she ever heard that there were people who looked down on magic as badly as she did on muggles."

"I'm not sure she'd believe it," said Severus.

"That just goes to show you how blinded her and her friends are by their own prejudice," said Lily.

"Lily?" called the muffled voice of Mrs. Evans through the bedroom door. "Lily, what's going on in there? Why is the door shut?"

"Nothing, Mum!" shouted Lily, hastening to the door to open it up as evidence that they had nothing to hide. "Just talking! Ugh, so embarrassing. Sorry, Sev," she said, turning back to her bed.

"Hm? Oh, no, yeah, sure, whatever," mumbled Severus nonsensically, trying desperately to get the burning in his ears to subside. "Um, listen," he said once he had regained some control over himself. "I got you something – it's nothing special, but I thought, I don't know, it looked nice, so…"

He took a small box out of his pants pocket and extended it towards Lily.

"Oh, I got you something, too!" exclaimed Lily. "I completely forgot – I was so distracted by how Petunia was acting at Aunt Rosie's – here." She handed him a package about the size of a shoebox though considerably heavier, which she had just dug out from under her bed.

Severus sat down on the floor to open his gift, tearing the paper off tenderly.

"Oh, Sev!"

Because of the small size of Lily's gift, she had managed to open it before Severus had even undone all the wrappings to his. She was now staring down into the open box with one hand over her heart, looking as though she were about to cry.

"It's _beautiful_," she whispered. Using two fingers she lifted out of the tiny box a very thin gold chain, at the end of which bobbed a little gold pendant carved shallow relief. A lily.

"It's not twenty-four k, or anything," said Severus, as if he were trying to explain his gift away. "But I saw it in a shop in Hogsmeade last time we were there and–"

"I love it! Oh, don't even open min, it's nowhere near as special!"

"I'm sure it's great," said Severus. He continued to unwrap his gift, hunching down as he did so to hide the blush that has reappeared upon his face. When he finally got all the wrappings off, he found himself staring down at a velvety green box with the words Crystal Vial Set scrawled across it in flourishing script. He opened the top to reveal nine elegant crystal vials in varying sizes, each with their own stopper and a stack of blank labels and string.

"I noticed that some of yours were a bit cracked, so I thought you could use a new set," said Lily. "You're work in potions deserves it. But of course you know I'll have to take partial credit for every potion of yours that turns out particularly fabulous," she teased.

"They're…" Severus began, but he stopped when his voice cracked. He swallowed. It hurt going down, a bit, but it was a good kind of pain. She smiled at him, pleased that he liked what she had gotten him, not knowing just how much it really meant. "Thank you."


	6. For Future Reference

**Chapter Six**

_For Future Reference_

Before anyone knew it, second semester had begun, and the forth years were suddenly facing an onslaught of extra homework in preparation for next year's OWLs.

"But they're not 'till next year!" Patrick Goldberg cried out when Professor McGonagall made her own announcement about the increase in homework during their first transfiguration class of the new semester. James and Sirius, who had had two other classes with Patrick earlier that day, had heard him shout the same appeal at both Professors Sprout and Kettleburn. Apparently he was hoping that at least one of their teachers might break if he kept bringing it up, and in what was clearly a result of sheer madness, he had forgotten that he was currently attempting to appeal to the strictest of Hogwarts's professors.

Professor McGonagall gave Patrick a sharp look that made him shrink back into his seat. "By the time you enter your fifth year of school," she continued, "you should be well accustomed to the kind of work load that you will be receiving from now on. And that is all the discussion that we will be having on that subject today," she declared, turning her back to the class and striding up to the cupboard. "I believe I told you before you left for winter holiday that we would be continuing with multi-media manipulation in living creatures this term. You all should have reviewed the chapter on casting isolated spells within a constantly fluctuating environment. We'll be starting with _Baumgales Fatile_. I'll review it for you briefly now, and then you are to practice turning these fish," Professor McGonagall swished her wand and opened the cupboard doors, revealing a stock of small fish bowls packed in the shelves, "into glass _without _transfiguring the water around them. This will require more skill and concentration than simply turning toads into wood, as we did last term, as it requires working around the constantly fluctuating and more densely packed environment of water. Mr. Potter!"

"Hmm? Wha?" James shot his head up, and everyone turned around to look at him. Next to James, Sirius tried to look innocent as he quickly hid the Mimicking Dummy Wand under the table (which they had been trying to activate and replace Julius Rosier's wand with).

"Can you tell me why becoming proficient in the _Fatile_ spell would be beneficial for a wizard?" asked McGonagall, knowing full well that James hadn't been listening.

James blinked, taking a moment to process the question. Just as McGonagall was about to remind him that he should pay better attention, James calmly and succinctly replied,

"Because the _Fatile _incantation utilizes a particular technique in spell casting that counteracts the effects of unknown environmental variables. Simpler transfiguration spells are more likely to fluctuate and become less effective if performed under unusual or particularly harsh conditions, such as during a storm, as some rainstorms carry magical properties if the water is from a magical source. The _Fatile_ spell is slightly more complex, but it allows for greater accuracy. It's also particularly useful for underwater spell casting, such as during wizarding expeditions to the Merkingdoms, although Merpeople tend not to like it when wizards perform magic in their waters." James made this entire speech with a cool kind of indifference while he polished his wand, purposefully trying to make himself look utterly at ease. Finally he looked up at McGonagall as if to say, _See? I don't even need to pay attention. Ha!_

_Should have picked on Black_, thought McGonagall after she gave James a curt nod, and James knew she was mentally rolling her eyes.

He certainly didn't _have _to go into all that detail, but she _had _provoked him, he reasoned. He had learnt that last little fact about the Merpeople from experience, having tried a variant of the _Fatile_ spell to usher a mermaid up to the surface of the lake in his second year (he hadn't known at the time that it was a spell that most wizards didn't even attempt until their forth year). It was with great surprise that James saw a very angry, and very, very ugly merman poke his head up out of the water with a spear in his hand; James was still indebted to the Giant Squid for escaping that ordeal without more than a few small scratches. Never again did any of the Marauders dare another to provoke the Merpeople as a joke.

"Now, everyone come up and grab a bowl and we'll start the lesson. I don't expect you to be able to perform the spell perfectly in one day, but in a week's time you should be able to accomplish this with ease," said McGonagall once she'd finished her demonstration. "Don't all come up at once! Back row first, come along."

The success of the assignment varied greatly throughout the class. Some students were unable to perform the spell to even the slightest degree, as they had neglected to review the assigned material over the holiday. Rosier was particularly frustrated, as he claimed that he _had _reviewed the material and couldn't explain why his wand suddenly wasn't working; one row behind him, James and Sirius sniggered. ("Serves him right for calling me a pillock in DADA!" whispered Sirius.) Most other students had given up on trying to transfigure the fish properly by singling it out in the water, and instead thought they could get away with starting the spell in a concentrated area of the water nearby the fish and entrapping the animal in the spell as the effects spread throughout the water like rapidly crystallizing ice. This, however, left a messy structure resembling a clear, upside down iceberg in the bowl that looked nothing like a fish, a result that didn't receive much better marks than the fish bowls that remained untouched by the end of the class. Sydney Valois was the last student to use this method; about halfway through the class she managed to entrap her fish in glass, and not wanting the effects to spread to any more of the water than necessary, she jerked her wand away from the bowl in a panic. This was entirely the wrong thing to do, as it caused the glass-berg to implode upon itself, shattering the fish into a million, tiny glass pieces that floated mournfully to the bottom of the bowl. This sent Sydney into a fit of tears for a good ten minutes, until her friends were able to calm her down and a slightly annoyed but nonetheless consoling McGonagall told her that if the fish was already turned to glass when it happened, then it didn't feel a thing.

James was the only one who had managed to perform the spell successfully. Not only had he managed to change the fish cleanly into glass without affecting a single drop of water, he had accomplished this so quickly that he spent the rest of class time animating the glass fish to continue to swim around the bowl. Once he had accomplished that, he charmed the fish to flash ruby red in honor of Gryffindor house. Some people, most of them avid admirers of the Quidditch team, awed at this display, but most of the class didn't appreciate what they felt was entirely unnecessary swank. James kept periodically glancing over at Lily to see if she had noticed his superb skill, and on the third glance he thought he did see her looking at him, as she suddenly jerked her head back round to her own fish, and was staring at it rather more dejectedly than she had been before. Every time she thought she had managed the spell, the fish would only seem to transform about three quarters of the way before it started to change back again.

As the students were finally gathering their things to leave at the end of the lesson, Dean Cooper accidentally bumped into his desk as he swung his bag over his shoulder, sending his bowl – which was filled more than halfway with glass icebergs from all the attempts he had made at the spell – teetering dangerously towards the edge before Professor McGonagall stabilized it will a quick spell from the front of the classroom.

"Anyone having difficulties with this particular theory should make time to see me at some point this week, or reach out to someone from my NEWT levels. I had advised you to do this several times this year and so far none of you have taken the opportunity – _do_ be careful, Mr. Cooper, try not to shatter the poor thing," she said, sending Sydney, who heard this comment from the doorway, bursting into tears again.

"Oh, come on Sid, it wasn't that bad," Denise consoled her. "Come on, let's go to the loo. Coming, Lil? Mary?"

"I can't," said Lily, feeling a bit guilty, though relieved nonetheless. It seemed as if Sydney had to be consoled about one thing or another just about every other day. "I'm meeting with Marian McDonald now."

"You're still interested in the prefect position?" asked Mary.

She was. Lily had long been interested in gaining the title of prefect for next year, and she had sought out Marian the day after they returned to school in order to gain her perspective on just what it was the teachers would be looking for in a candidate. Denise didn't understand why Lily would want to be burdened with all that extra responsibility. Mary also didn't seem keen on the idea of Lily pursuing the position, though her reasons for this were less clear.

"She's just going to tell me what the workload is like. She said there are some nice benefits, too. Something about a private bathroom," she added, suddenly compelled to defend her decision to her less-than-understanding friends. "Sorry, Sid. You'll be ok, won't you?"

"Yeah, just being s-silly," Sydney choked.

Lily gave her a sympathetic smile and squeezed her arm before heading off to meet Marian.

As it turned out, someone else was more interested in 'consoling' Sydney, anyway.

"Looks like someone needs a knight in shining armor," Sirius said, looking out the door where Sydney had just left. He slung his book bag over his shoulder, and then turned to James. "You got this? 'Cuz I've got a damsel in distress in need of some serious charm," he said, flashing James a debonair grin.

"Go," said James, who was still observing his fish with pride, as it was now doing somersaults in the water. "I doubt McGonagall want to talk to you, anyway," he added. "After she caught you cheating _three times_."

"_Attempting_ to cheat," amended Sirius. "Totally different. And if you had just helped a fellow out instead of tinkering with your own toy – show off." He looked down at James's fish with distain.

"You call it showing off, I call it strategy," said James. "McGonagall's a hard egg to crack – or would you rather I were out of her good graces, like you?"

"What makes you think you're in her good graces?" scoffed Sirius. "One flashy fish and you think she's gonna forget all the times she put us in detention?"

"You want this done or not?" James asked.

Over the winter holiday, James, Sirius and Peter had made great strides in their progress to becoming animagi – that is, until they hit a dead end when they had a problem with an especially complex spell. This had particularly frustrated James, who hadn't yet come across a transfiguration problem that he couldn't eventually figure out. As they obviously couldn't bring the exact problem to anyone's attention in the context of what they were doing, the boys had finally decided that they needed to ask the best transfiguration artist they knew for advise – under the guise of asking theoretical questions about the coursework. They had singled out James as the one who would actually do this, as he had the best standing in McGonagall's class, which meant that she was least likely to be suspicious of him inquiring about more advanced theories.

"Sure, sure," Sirius said, waving him off. "Just remember not to do that cocky 'I've got you right where I want you' smirk thing you sometimes pull. She hates that."

"I don't do that," said James with confidence.

"Yes you do," said Remus and Peter in unison.

"You were just doing it now, actually," said Sirius.

"Fine. I won't do that," said James a bit hotly. Sirius, Remus, Peter wished him luck, then gathered their things and walked away. Once they were out of earshot, James added under his breath, _"Because I don't."_

He began to put his books and wand into his bag at an exceptionally slow speed, so that by the time he was finally fastening the buckles on his book bag, the last few students had finally exited the classroom and closed the door.

Professor McGonagall didn't yet realize that she still had a student to contend with, as she was currently turned away from the rows of desks, fiddling with the old-fashioned lock on the cupboard where she had just put away all the fish bowls. Once she had fastened the lock on the correct combination, she swung the cupboard doors open once more, revealing rows or now empty shelves. Looking satisfied, she shut the doors again and re-fastened the lock. Turning around to her desk, she gave a start when she found James standing in front of it. "Yes, Mr. Potter, may I help you?"

"I just had a few questions about some of the theories I was reading about over the holiday – if you have the time, ma'am," he said, struggling to sound unassuming. Although James had a knack for charming most of his professors when he set his mind to it, Professor McGonagall was far too keen for his usual tricks.

"I have to say, when I suggested that students seek extra help in my class if need be, I didn't think that the first one to see me about it would be you, Mr. Potter," said Professor McGonagall, shuffling the papers on her desk and putting them away into a drawer. "You seem to have a fine handle on the concepts in this class – although, I should probably warn you that flashy charms will not earn you any extra points. In fact," she added, just as James was about to reply, "if you find yourself completing an assignment early once more, I may ask you to assist some of the struggling students with their technique. _That _might get you somewhere."

"Thanks, Professor," said James. "But I actually had some questions about a few – er – slightly more advanced theories. Things we haven't covered in class yet."

"Ah," said McGonagall, sitting down at her desk. "Well, I have time at the moment, have a seat."

James obeyed. "Ok, well, I was reading Thorflax Keplarr and his theory on consciousness manipulation in the transformation of alpha-sentient beings into bet-"

"Thorflax Keplarr?" interrupted McGonagall. "You were reading _The Twelve Theories?_ That's an extremely advanced text, Potter. I myself didn't read it until my seventh year. I can assure you that we won't be learning anything that advanced until we're well into the NEWT level."

"Yes, Professor, but out of curiosity," continued James, "I just wanted to get a few things straight."

"Curiosity, hm?" said McGonagall, pursing her lips. "Mr. Potter, you do realize that you have earned yourself quite the reputation for your – how should I put this? _Interesting_ judgment when it comes to the proper use of magic in this school."

"Thank you," said James.

"Not a complement, Mr. Potter," quipped McGonagall. "Perhaps _inappropriate_ use of magic would be a better choice of words."

"I prefer to think of myself as creative," said James.

"I have no doubt," said McGonagall. "What I do doubt is your purely theoretical interest in Keplarr."

"So…" said James, wondering where this was going, if anywhere at all, and praying that she wasn't onto him. _She can't be! I haven't told her anything yet!_ "Does that mean you're _not_ going to explain it…or…?"

McGonagall blinked very slowly, as if she were losing patience with someone very dim, and James recognized this gesture as her equivalent of an eye roll – slightly less rude, but still moderately snarky. Very McGonagall.

"No," she said, and James heard the inaudible _"Regretfully"_ behind her words. "I am not in the habit of denying my students academic information. But let me ask you something first. How do you feel about tutoring some of the younger students who are struggling in Transfiguration?"

"Tutoring?" James echoed, completely thrown off by the question. As in having to sacrifice his free time to sit down with a bunch of underclassmen in the library and practically do their homework for them? "That sounds terrible," he said honestly.

"Wonderful," said McGonagall cheerfully. "Then that is what you will be doing for me for detention from now on. Let that be a warning to you if you find yourself tempted to practice any of Keplarr's incantations anywhere outside of my classroom. Believe me, I can find you enough struggling students to easily fill up an entire weekend."

"Ok, you have my word that the next time I get detention, it won't be from practicing advanced transfiguration in the halls," said James, not even bothering to insinuate that he didn't plan on being in her office for other disciplinary reasons in the future.

"Very well," said McGonagall. She took off her glasses and leaned forward slightly over the table, her hands folded in front of her. "What would you like to know?"

In all honesty, McGonagall knew that feeding this particular student's curiosity was probably something that most teachers would shy away from. However, James's prodigious talent in _her_ subject made her a bit more inclined to indulge him. She knew that he could grow to be a truly great transfigurationist, of only his penchant for mischief–making didn't outweigh his academic interests. The spells came too easily to him, too naturally, so that McGonagall was starting to fear that he wasn't really _working_ in her class very much at all. So, if he were finally appearing to take interest in cultivating his natural talent, she would gladly help him on. After all, if he were already asking questions about _Keplarr_, then even _she _had slightly underestimated his talent in the art.

"Ok, one more time," said Sirius. "Just explain it to me – one – more – time."

All four boys were behind the mirror again, where James had been trying – and failing miserably – for the past two hours to explain what he had learned from McGonagall earlier that day. Sirius's hair had reached a Potter-level of dishevelment from the number of times that he had gripped at it in frustration. Peter had his face buried in his hands, having given up on trying to understand the theory half an hour ago. And though Remus didn't actually need to understand the theory, as he wouldn't be transfiguring himself, his academic pride had him resolved to make sense of it; he was currently hunched over by the wall, five full rolls of parchment cascading out before him with so many frustrated scribbles, equations and diagrams on it that it looked as if _Studies in Advanced Transfiguration_ had thrown up all over the parchment. His eyes were darting crazily all around what he had written, yet he was no closer to understanding anything that James had been saying for the past two hours.

"Just – wait – _no_ – wait!" said Remus before James could begin again. "Ok, just… ok, so you're saying that… you're saying that… but then you keep saying… that it's… UGGGHH! You know, maybe it's so _frustrating_ because every time you explain something you take it back and tell us it's not really how it is, but sort of, cuz it's more like this, _but not really that either, cuz it's more like that_–"

"Remus," said Peter tiredly, lifting his head up from his arms. "You're grouchy."

"I'm not _grouchy_, Peter–"

"Yes you are," said Peter, letting his head fall back on his arms so that the rest of his sentence was slightly muffled. "You get sarcastic when you're grouchy."

"I'm not taking it back," explained James patiently. "I'm just trying to make sure you don't think about it too… literally."

"This is nuts," said Sirius. "It can't have taken McGonagall this long to explain it. How _exactly _did she phrase it?"

"I thought it would be best if I phrased it differently," said James skeptically.

"Try me," said Sirius, while Remus poised his quill over the last small section of blank parchment that he had available.

"Ok," said James, taking a breath. "She said that stagnating consciousness manipulation in alpha-sentient beings during any digression to a bestial form relies on–" Sirius, Remus and Peter all started to groan, and James rolled his eyes, having known that this would be their reaction. He barreled on, "On the _conception_ of the process as multilateral and unstable. And that's as compact as I can put it."

"BOLLOCKS!" was Sirius's only response.

Outside, a group of first years on their way to dinner gave a start when they heard the mirror emit a growl and scampered off in the opposite direction.

"It all goes back to what I keep saying," continued James. "The first thing you have to grasp is the concept of instability. Then the rest of it will all make sense."

"But _that_ makes no sense!" said Remus. "You're basically saying that we have to first acknowledge that nothing is what we think it is, and then build up from there, that basically the only thing that exists is ambiguity, and nothing more – but you can't build up from _nothing!_"

"Yeah, that's it!" said James with wide-eyed relief. "Why do you keep saying you don't get it?"

"GAAAH!" Remus shouted, throwing his hands up and tossing his quill in the air.

"Look," said James. "You have to stop thinking about it like a concrete formula, and start thinking of it as… as more of an art. _Exactly _like an art. The only certainty is ambiguity. It's actually quite beautiful, when you think about it. Just think of music, or poetry. Great poetry doesn't just follow a formula, it draws from what's intangible – but that intangibility doesn't make it any less true. The same goes for transfiguration. It can't happen unless the person doing it is open to the idea of multiple states of being that always have the potential to exist both simultaneously and exclusively from one another."

"That's a complete contradiction," said Remus.

"Not if you understand it as a potential state of being as opposed to a literal one," said James.

"Ok, I think I get what you're trying to say," said Remus. "But I still don't buy it. I mean, _I_ undergo a transformation once a month. _I_ should be able to understand this from _experience_, but I don't."

"Actually, considering the kind of transformation you undergo, it makes sense that you wouldn't," said James. "When you transform, you don't retain your sense of human consciousness. That's the difference between werewolves and animagi – animagi retain their human consciousness, otherwise they wouldn't remember to turn back into a human. Werewolf transformations are involuntary, so you don't need to remember in order to change back. _That's _why understanding this part of the process is so important. If we do it wrong, the first time we change may result in us not being able to change back."

"Ok, just…" said Sirius, gripping his forehead and squinting his eyes shut. "Ugh, look, I'm burnt out. And this room is getting smaller by the minute. What's say you we start this up again tomorrow?"

"Sounds good to me," said Peter, lifting himself from the floor with great effort.

On their way back to Gryffindor tower, as the boys were discussing when they would all be able to meet behind the mirror again, Remus suddenly stopped in his tracks and made a loud shushing noise, peering down the corridor. They all stopped talking as the sound of footsteps coming around the corner greeted their ears. A second later they saw a figure turn the corner and start towards them in the light of the torch-lit corridor.

"Ellie!" said James, utterly shocked.

"James?" she looked out, having not seen the boys in the corridor until James spoke.

"Wha – uh – hi," he said, his mouth suddenly dry. "When did you get back?" he asked.

"Just about an hour ago," she said. Her tone was even, monotonous. "Didn't want to come in with the rush."

"So, what are you up to?" asked James, not knowing what else to say. He was the only one amongst the boys who really ever talked to Ellie, although the last time they had spoken was at her dad's funeral. It occurred to James that this must be why he felt so uncharacteristically uncomfortable in her presence at the moment. "I'm sure your friends want to see you," he added, hoping to clarify why he was surprised to see her alone so far away from where the Ravenclaw tower was rumored to be.

"I was looking for you, actually," said Ellie. "I heard the Gryffindor common room is supposed to be somewhere on the seventh floor, so I thought I'd walk around a bit and ask if anybody'd seen you." Her gaze shifted uneasily to the other three boys before returning to James. "Feel like a walk?"

"Always," said James, offering her a small smile. "I'll see you guys in the common room, yeah?" he told the others. Sirius gave him a quizzical look, but he shuffled off with Remus and Peter without a word.

Ellie looked just the same as James had remembered her, with her bony frame, freckled skin, and limp, dirty blonde hair chopped off just below her ears. The only major difference was in her eyes. They looked hollow.

It was… what was the word? Awkward? No, more like painful. It was painful to be standing here with Ellie all of a sudden after having been almost completely out of contact with her since her dad's funeral. Though James always asked after Ellie whenever his parents met with or wrote to her mother, and Ellie responded in the same manner, this was the most contact that the two had had over the past four months.

It wasn't as though they were very close – they were only friends in a very general sense – little more than casual acquaintances. They had never written to each other before, having no reason to be in contact with one another outside of having someone to talk to at the galas they each found themselves attending with their parents. Though the two were far from disliking each other, Ellie was a somewhat bossy, overly serious girl whose personality often clashed with James's more playful one. Somehow it seemed an unpleasant reason to start writing each other, over the death of one of their parents.

"Please, just – don't ask me how I am," said Ellie when James opened his mouth to speak. "I… I never know what to say when people ask. It's a reflex question, you know? I came back to school to recuperate, not to be reminded of…" If at all possible, Ellie's already pale face blanched even more. But she seemed to collect herself a moment later. "I've had months to wallow, and think and… I just need something else."

"Then I'll just say that I'm glad you're back," said James softly. "Truly, Ellie. Now, what did you want to talk to me about?"

Together they started up the corridor.

"I wanted to talk about you, actually," she said, twisting her fingers in front of her as if she were nervous about whatever it is she had to say. James raised his eyebrows slightly, but said nothing. "My mum… before I came back from school, she started asking me about – about some strange things. She mentioned you."

"Me? I haven't seen your mother since – for a while," he ended, not wanting to bring up the funeral again.

"Yes, but apparently over Christmas break she had a visit with your parents. She said that they came to her about a problem you've been having remembering that day you wound up in the hospital."

"Why would they do that?" James asked, more to himself than to Ellie.

"Because they heard I've had trouble remembering things, too," said Ellie. "It's like a whole half day is missing where I can't figure out where I was or what I did. It happened a little before…" She stopped, and James realized that she was thinking about her father's death again.

"Now that you mention it," said James, "My parents were asking me if I remembered anything again towards the end of Christmas break."

"Have you?" she asked.

"No," said James, not bothering to hide his disappointment. "It's the same as you – all blank. Except for this one image." He furrowed his brow. "I think it's from the hospital. I'm lying somewhere and there are a bunch of people standing over me, all blurry. That's all. Nothing from the accident."

"That's more than what I've got," said Ellie. "That's what your parents wanted to know – if I'd remembered anything."

"But… what, do they think it's connected somehow?" said James. "I was flying when it happened. Or I think I was. Is it possible… were you flying that day?" asked James.

"Me? Flying?" said Ellie, and for the first time she offered him a small smile. "Oh, no. I haven't flown since Madame LaFalc's lessons in first year. I'm terrified of heights."

By this time, they had reached the third floor corridor just around the corner from the moving staircases.

"Well, I'm going this way," said Ellie, pointing to the left.

"Oh, ok. Um, so listen… If you ever wanted to talk – you know, about… well, anything at all–"

"GANG WAY!"

"What the hell?" explained James as Tony Marsden barreled past him on his way toward the staircases.

"Get back here, you git!" shouted a voice James knew to belong to Macnair. Before James could put out his wand, however, another Slytherin, Crabbe, were already shooting past him in pursuit of Marsden. It was certainly clear why they sounded so angry with him; James had just been able to see that Macnair's entire head was covered in large, ugly, oozing purple pustules.

A third Slytherin, Avery, also sporting purple pustules, followed close behind, but by this time James already had his wand out and with a quick flick he had Avery down on the ground with a tripping hex.

"Nice friends you've got there," said James to Avery as Macnair and Crabbe continued their pursuit of Tony. "So, let's see. Two Slytherin Quidditch players chasing one Gryffindor player? Am I to assume that this is their idea of pre-game hazing? Have they recruited the whole of your house or were you just keen to participate?"

"Is that all you jocks ever think about?" sneered Avery.

"Well then what are you doing with Marsden, then, eh?" asked James.

"That little son-of-a-squib hexed us!" he shouted.

"Obviously," said James patiently, as if he were discussing the day's happenings over tea. "What I'm wondering is why. Even Marsden isn't stupid enough to take on three blokes himself unprovoked. So what'd you do? Call him an idiot to his face? I mean, I get it, I do, he is – but ragging on Marsden is a _Gryffindor_ _team privilege_. Sorry, but you just haven't earned the right."

"Yeah, that's right!" said Tony, who had just re-emerged from around the corner that he'd shot around a few minutes ago. "Wait, what?"

"Shut up, Tony," said James. "Well done, by the way," in reference to Avery and Macnair's faces. He glanced over his shoulder at Tony and looked him quickly up and down as if to say, _I don't know where that came from, but this sudden display of aptitude has left me surprisingly impressed._ "Where are Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum?"

"Left 'em blowing chunks by the eastern staircase."

"How'd you manage that?" asked James.

"They're what?" shouted Avery, pausing as he tenderly probed a few of the pustules on his face to check the damage.

"Um," came a small voice, and James turned with a start, having forgotten that Ellie was still there. "Should I go… get a teacher, or–"

"Why?" asked James.

"It's all good, Dominique's already gone to fetch McGonagall," said Tony.

"Sorry, _what?_" said James. "Why didn't you say so? Or did you _want_ to get caught?"

"So, um–" Ellie continued.

"Yeah, get going, you wouldn't want her to think you were involved. I'll be right behind." Ellie nodded and quickly took leave. "Come one, Tony–" James started.

"It's not _me_ who's got to worry so much as them," said Tony, nodding his head at Avery in reference to the group that had been chasing him. "I only hexed them in defense! What they did to Chrissie was way worse–"

"Oh, shut up you troll-for-brains, that is so not–"

"What do you mean, what they did to Chrissie?" James talked over Avery. "Chrissie's never one for a brawl."

"They attacked her unprovoked!" said Tony, growing angrier by the second as he began to recollect the events that led him there. He was actually growing a bit red in the face. "You wouldn't believe what those bastards did to her! _Why the hell did you do it?_" he hissed, rounding on Avery.

"Do _what?_" asked James, growing impatient. "What the hellhappened?"

"You mean you didn't start this one for a change?" came a voice from behind them.

"Evans!" started James, and his free hand immediately flung up into his hair. "How's things?"

"Well, Potter, since you asked," said Lily with a false air of pleasantry, "I nearly slipped into a massive puddle of sick all over the top of the eastern staircase. How've _you_ been?"

"Fine," replied James, nonplussed. "That why you've got no shoes on?" he asked, seeing that she was carrying her shoes and socks in her hand and realizing that she wasn't exaggerating, for she must have had to take her shoes off to clean them after finding herself ankle-deep in vomit.

"Should I even ask if you had anything to do with – good _God_, what did you do to his _face?_" she asked in abhorrence upon seeing Avery.

"Oh, that was me," said Tony, raising a finger and offering her a fleeting grin. "Sorry 'bout the sick, too."

"What the _hell_, Marsden?" she asked, looking him up and down, clearly wondering how he could have vomited so profusely and yet be looking right as rain.

"Oh, no," Tony started in again. "I mean, _I _didn't – see, the Macnair–"

But once again Tony was cut off, this time by a blast of yellow sparks that shot right into the side of his head, blowing him right off his feet and onto the floor. Before either James or Lily could react, Tony was already writhing on the floor with his head in his hands, groaning in pain. Lily and James turned at once to return fire on Avery, both shooting simultaneous curses at him. He was immediately knocked back at least three feet, landing on his backside, and as he began to sit up in a daze, the effect of their combined curses began to reveal itself. Lily had only used _Expelliarmus_, knowing that they only needed to disarm the boy in order to stop the fight; James, on the other hand, had acted less sensibly and, having wanted to try out a vanishing spell on a human being for some time, had used _Evansesco._ Having been slightly muddled by the interaction with Lily's disarming spell, Avery did not actually disappear. His dress shirt and trousers, on the other hand, did, each departing his person and vanishing into thin air with a small _pop!_ It was a far better result than James could have anticipated, and his glee was apparent.

"Oh!" Lily squeaked in surprise, and a moment later she had to purse her lips together to stop herself from laughing. She snorted despite herself, and brought her hand to her face in a vain attempt to muffle it as a chuckling James looked back at her.

"_Son'f a bitch!"_ groaned Tony from the floor behind them. James and Lily rushed over. It took them each a moment to realize what was happening to him – at first it looked as though a golden-haired cat had shed the majority of its coat all over him. Then Lily gasped in horror as she saw that only a few sparse patches of hair remained on Tony's head. His entire scalp where the hair had already fallen out was red and blistering. He picked up a handful of hair from his lap and looked at it forlornly. "Damnit," he groaned.

A loud stream of obscenities told them that Avery had become cognizant enough to notice that he was wearing nothing but his underpants, but James and Lily, knowing him to be disarmed, gave him no mind.

"'S he not wearing trousers?" asked Tony sluggishly, still a bit dazed by the force of the spell to his head.

"Don't worry about it," said Lily. "Can you get him to the infirmary?" she asked James, feeling that he was better able to support Tony throughout the trek to the hospital wing.

"What about you?" asked James, helping Tony to stand.

"I can't just leave him here," she said, nodding her head over at the Slytherin. "I should conjure some robes for him at least. Clear up his boils."

"Like he'd do the same for you. Why are you so _nice?_" asked James, though his tone made it clear that this wasn't a compliment.

"Why're _you_ so–"

"WELL," hissed a cold voice, and everyone, even Tony, who was barely able to stand, froze. "Would one of you care to tell me," Professor McGonagall continued slowly, as if she were trying very hard not to shout at the top of her lungs, "What in Godric's name is going on here?"

James turned to face her, but there was such rage eminating from her gaze that he felt he might burst into flames on the spot if he actually looked her in the eyes. Instead he fixed his gaze behind her and saw Macnair (whose face had cleared slightly and now only sported a series of faint purple spots), Crabbe, and Dominique Stevens, a fifth year Ravenclaw chaser, standing a safe distance away.

"Um…" he began, looking anywhere but at McGonagall and finally settling his gaze on Lily. He raised his eyebrows at her in a silent plea for help.

"What are you looking at me for?" Lily hissed. "I only just got here."

"Hardly any later than I did," retorted James. "I don't know how this started any more than you!"

"He started it, ma'am," said Tony, who was hidden from McGonagall's view behind James, so that she only saw his finger pointing down the hall in Avery's direction.

"That is hardly an explana – _Merlin's beard, boy, where are your clothes?_" shouted McGonagall with a start, having until that point been too distracted by the group of Gryffindors she encountered upon turning the corridor to notice Avery. Macnair, Crabbe, and Dom all stepped forward to see what she was referring to, their eyes growing twice in size as they did.

"I dunno, do I?" Avery responded rather rudely.

"Merlin, Cad," said Macnair, clearly embarrassed for him.

McGonagall walked briskly towards him, flourishing her wand as she did so that a set of plain black robes streamed out of the end. With another flick of her wand the robes wrapped themselves around Avery (none too gently). McGonagall's brow continued to furrow as she inspected his face.

"You two, then? _Furnuncuquitus!_" McGonagall jabbed her wand at Avery's face and in a matter of seconds the boils seemed to melt away, leaving only a faint purple spot wherever there was once a pustule, so that his complexion now matched Macnair's. "That'll wear off in a few hours," she told him.

"Forget him, look at Marsden!" said James impatiently, holding Tony aloft much like a rag doll so that he wouldn't keel over.

"Three against one, eh?" sneered Crabbe, looking from Avery to James, Lily and Tony. "Not very sportsmanlike."

"You're one to talk!" Dom retorted.

"Oh, do shut up, the lot of you," said McGonagall, nearly reaching her wit's end.

But upon turning back to the three Gryffindors, all anger seemed to be lost in a moment of sympathy as she saw the state that Tony, now in full view, was in. Her shoulders dropped and she bustled over to him. "You'll be alright, Mr. Marsden, but I'd rather have Madame Pomfrey take care of this," she said with a little less of her usual curtness after giving him a once-over. "Mr. Potter will accompany you to the hospital wing. And then _you,_" she said with more severity as she turned to James, "Will come directly to my office to discuss this little affair. Miss Evans, Mr. Avery, you two can join these three," she gestured to Macnair, Crabbe, and Dom, "in my office now."

Lily glanced at James, who suddenly felt compelled to explain away her apparent guilt. He sighed inwardly. If it were anyone else he probably wouldn't give a damn. But she had these eyes that sort of bored into your soul. Damn her.

"Professor, Evans didn't actually do anything wrong–"

"I'm sure Miss Evans is perfectly capable of explaining herself, Mr. Potter," McGonagall interrupted him. "_Hospital Wing. Now_."

James shrugged at Lily apologetically before making his way down the corridor with Tony.

"Professor, can I go with them to the hospital wing?" he heard Dom say. "Just to check on Chris?" This didn't surprise James. For a Ravenclaw Quidditch rival, Dom was on very friendly terms with most everyone on the Gryffindor team, especially Chrissie.

As they weren't joined in their trek to the infirmary, however, and as he had heard no response from McGonagall, James could only assume that Dom was silenced by one of the professor's ice-cold glares.

When they were out of earshot, James finally questioned Tony.

"What did they do to Chrissie?"

"You're looking at it," Tony grumbled.

James couldn't help but wince. The Slytherins hadn't chosen their curse arbitrarily. Chrissie had – or, _had_ had – incredibly lush black hair (courtesy of her mother's Indian heritage) that swept all the way down the length of her back. It caused her to be the envy of a great number of Hogwarts girls, and the object of some affection by a number of boys. James made a mental note to tell Chrissie that Dom was concerned about her, knowing that that might cheer her up by some small degree.

When James entered McGonagall's office twenty minutes later, he found himself walking into the tail end of Crabbe's undoubtedly very imaginative version of events. Behind McGonagall's desk stood Professors Slughorn and Flitwick, both looking very cross in their own way.

"–which is when _I _turned around and saw all her hair falling out. I wish I'd seen who'd done it, but as I said I wasn't looking at her because Marsden had me distracted." (At this point Dom looked as if she were ready to blow a fuse.) "You know, I don't think you should rule Marsden out, ma'am – who's to say he didn't do it himself just to get us into trouble? Because _I _certainly didn't–"

"Ok, _seriously?_" shouted Dom. "What kind of an idiot do you take them for?"

"Miss Stevens, do be quiet!" piped Flitwick, puzzled by his usually very good-natured student's behavior.

"Yes, Miss Stevens, I think we've heard quite enough from you," said McGonagall, rubbing her temple with two finders. "Well, Mr. Potter, you took your time," she said, raising an eyebrow at James.

James said nothing, surmising that silence would get him father with the headmistress than any excuse would. He had, in fact, been checking on Christina after he had settled Tony in with Madame Pomfrey. Her head was wrapped in bandages, which had taken James by surprise, because he hadn't realized the curse would be bad enough to prevent even Madame Pomfrey from growing her hair back instantly. He was even more surprised, however, to find how composed Chrissie was about the whole thing. Not that he's expected her to be in tears – she was a pretty tough girl.

"I've been wanting to cut it short for months," she had told him. "But my mum said I'd be breaking her heart if I did. Now she can't blame me."

"Ever the optimist," said James with a small grin. "I'm glad. I mean – not _glad_, just – Merlin, the way Tony was describing it, I thought I'd find you a lot worse off."

"Well…" she said, looking down. "At the time I was much less composed. It hurt. A lot. I had to run all the way here, hoping no one would see… And Dom was running after me the whole time, so she must have seen all my hair falling out…" As she went on Chrissie's face began to look more and more crestfallen. She soon snapped herself out of it, however, and said with in a reasonably chipper tone, "But they've done me a favor, really, without knowing it. It'll be much easier to play Quidditch now that I don't have to brush the hair out of my eyes every five seconds."

Dom, however, looked less composed when James entered McGonagall's office, so he gave her a look that he hoped would reassure her that her friend would be fine.

"I won't ask to tell me your version of events, Mr. Potter, as I've heard quite a number of them already," said McGonagall. "I only have one question for you, as Miss Evans claims that she is unclear as to how it happened." She gave Lily a skeptical, purse-lipped glance before continuing. "How _exactly _did Mr. Avery lose his all his clothes?"

"I accidently vanished them," said James.

"Pardon?" coughed Slughorn. "'Accidently'?"

"Yeah," said James. "It wasn't Evans's fault," he added, once again feeling compelled to defend her just so that she might think a little better of him. Also, if the school was going to be talking about how Avery ended up knocked on his arse in nothing but his knickers, he definitely wanted to take full credit. "She was disarming him after he cursed Marsden – which I wouldn't blame her for."

"As she said," replied McGonagall. "Regardless, dueling is strictly forbidden unless it is done in a supervised classroom setting, _as all of you are well aware of_. You shall all be receiving detention, which should come as no surprise. Msrs. Avery, Macnair, and Crabbe, Miss Stevens – your heads of house will assign you punishments in their offices. Good night."

"Yes, right, follow me you three," said Slughorn, ushering his students out the door without another word to McGonagall.

"Evening, Minerva," said Flitwick, bustling out of the room after Dom, who looked even crosser than her head of house was.

"You know Slughorn's going to go easy on them, don't you?" James said once the door closed behind Flitwick. "And you're not _really_ giving us detention, are you? They put_ two_ of us in the hospital wing – both Quidditch players, by the way, which I'm guessing is why this whole thing got started – and all they're going to get is s slap on the wrist–"

"Of course you'll be serving detention, Potter!" said McGonagall exasperatedly. "Merlin's sake, it was only _this morning_ we were having a conversation about you keeping out of trouble! If I didn't know any better start to think you _liked_ detention!" She paused to collect herself, and James very wisely didn't take the opportunity to retort. "As we discussed, your punishment will be devoting your free time to tutoring students in the library. I suppose it's only fair, Miss Evans, that you do the same. I will speak to Professors Slughorn and Flitwick about which of their students are most in need of tutelage, as I understand that those are your best subjects. Potter, I'll have a list for you tomorrow morning."

"What about Quidditch practice?" asked James, not for an instant believing that McGonagall would sacrifice Gryffindor's chance at the game just to teach him a lesson. "The game's next week, and–"

"I don't aim to punish the team, Mr. Potter. You'll have just enough time for all of your regular practices, I assure you," she said curtly. "But only just. You're right; the pre-game excitement in this school has become the cause of far too much trouble as of late. But I don't wish to discuss this further. Bed. Now. Good night."

"It's seven thirty–" said James.

"Good night!"

Out in the hall, on their way back to Gryffindor tower, James tried his best to end things on a reasonably good note with Lily.

"Great. Like they're going to make me prefect now," mumbled Lily, but James didn't hear her.

"Thanks for your help back there," he said.

"There's no need to be sarcastic," she replied.

"I wasn't – I'm not," he said, taken aback. "I mean with Avery."

"I'm not sure what I did you've got to thank me for," said Lily.

_Why's she make it so difficult to give her a damn compliment?_ thought James.

"Well, despite what I said back there, I'm pretty sure you're half the reason Avery's trousers went missing. So thanks for letting me take the credit – and no, that's still not sarcasm."

"Why've you got to be like that?" asked Lily. There was something in her tone that James couldn't quite place. Concern? Sadness? Neither of those possibilities made sense to him.

"What do you mean?"

"Is house rivalry really that important to you?" she asked. "Do you _like_ doing such… such unkind things to people? Why do you act so mean?" She stopped to face him. _Act_ mean – yes, those were the right words. She saw enough of him to know that he really wasn't. She would never admit it to him, because it would only inflate his ego, but he really was very funny, and he didn't need to prove to anyone how smart he was. But all too often it would go too far, and it almost always involved some variation of Gryffindor-Slytherin rivalry, which is what really bothered Lily.

"I don't think most people would see it that way," said James, the bitterness in his tone very clear. "And excuse me, but I barely had anything to do with this whole thing."

"I know you didn't," said Lily. "And yes, I'm well aware that most everybody else is highly entertained by your pranks and your impromptu duels… Maybe it's because I'm one of the few people who's not entertained by all this rivalry between the houses."

"Listen, just because your best friend's a Slytherin doesn't mean we should all start getting chummy with the lot," said James, practically shuddering at the idea. "I'm still curious, how _did_ that happen?"

"Why do you say that like it's an insult?" asked Lily. "You talk about them like they're the only prejudiced ones, but do you hear _yourself?_"

"It's not like I've never met a Slytherin I didn't like, but seriously, of all the people to think well of in that house – _Snape?_"

"What is it about him that you hate so much?" asked Lily, her voice starting to shake. "Why do you have to hate him?"

In the back of his mind, James knew the answer. _Because he's got her and you don't, the undeserving git_, a nagging voice whispered. _Shut up!_ he told it.

"How can you defend him?" he asked. "You're so… you're so much _better_."

Lily raised an eyebrow at him. She wasn't really sure where to go from there. It as an insult to her friend and a compliment to herself, a praising of her character and a condemnation of another's all at once. "I'm not better than anyone else. And neither are you."

_You _are_ better, _thought James.

"I'm not the only one who thinks it's weird that you like hanging around with him," said James, trying a different approach.

This was entirely the wrong thing to say. James, of course, had no idea that Lily had been called every variant of the term "weirdo" since she started muggle primary school, when strange things would happen to her that she was unable to explain. He couldn't have known that her own sister had shunned her as a freak. Or that, despite the fact that she made friends easily at Hogwarts and was well-liked by most everybody, it didn't stop them from whispering behind her back about her fraternizations with "that Slytherin boy." She had even come to be careful mentioning things from her muggle life around Severus, who didn't understand how she could talk enthusiastically about the muggle world when his own associations with it were so negative. And then there were the jeers about her bloodline she pretended not to hear from – yes, she had to admit it – a lot of people in the Slytherin house. But for some reason she had thought James Potter was different. She couldn't quite place it – perhaps it was the way he talked to her, or the fact that he openly viewed her as an academic rival – but something about the way he treated her most of the time was… flattering. He viewed her as an equal, someone on his level, someone he actually admired. And this, if she really had to admit it, was why Lily was always so disappointed whenever he'd pull stunts that put more friction between the Gryffindor and Slytherin households – because he was making it harder for her to be his friend.

Lily squeezed her eyes shut to stop the tears that she was equally surprised and mortified to find welling up. "If you all think it's so _weird_," she said softly, her voice still shaking despite all her attempts to keep it even. "Then go and laugh about it together, because I'm _done_ talking to _you_." And with that, she stormed off, leaving James alone in the corridor, too surprised by her reaction to form the words that would have called her back.

After a moment, he kicked a nearby suit of armor in frustration. Almost immediately it kicked him back in annoyance before re-adjusting its helmet and returning to a stock-still position.

"Ow! Ugh, bloody wonderful, thank you _so_ much!" James shouted at the armor while rubbing his backside. The armor's shoulders were shuddering slightly in silent laughter, creating a clanging sound that followed James down the corridor. "Oh, shut _up!_" he yelled back at it. "Bloody brilliant. First day back, and I get myself detention for a fight I didn't–"

"Talking to yourself?" chimed in a courtier from a painting on the wall. "Tsk tsk! 'Tis a sure sign of–"

"Mind your own damn business," shot James.

"Well, I never!" said the picture, but James was already rounding the corner and out of sight.

Back in her office, Minerva McGonagall was jotting down the last few names of students that James would be tutoring come tomorrow. After placing her quill back in its inkwell, she leaned back in her chair and sighed, bringing her fingers once more to her temple. Dumbledore was right. The war that was looming in the wizarding world _was_ already affecting their students, though they may not be able to recognize it themselves yet. An old-fashioned Quidditch rivalry was an easy excuse for the children of sparring families to fight, and the damage wouldn't have been nearly as bad in a less politically troubled time.

If she were completely honest with herself, allowing Potter to continue attending Quidditch practice around his detention sentence was a bit of a selfish act on her part. She knew it was superstitious, foolish even – but somehow it seemed to her that a small victory, even a seemingly insignificant one on the Quidditch pitch, would be a hopeful omen for the greater war looming ahead.


	7. Optimistic to the Point of Foolishness

**Chapter Seven**

_Optimistic to the Point of Foolishness_

"Like this?"

James took the parchment from the first year – what was his name again? John? Jeremy? – and looked it over once more.

He was still fulfilling his detention sentence even long after the Quidditch game against Slytherin had come and gone. On the other hand, his spirits were still buoyed from the effect of his team's win. If James wasn't one of the most popular boys in school before, he sure as hell was at the height of cool now. And Jeremy, for his part, was simply elated that he was getting one-on-one time with a Quidditch star.

"What's this, a turtle?" asked James, turning the diagram he was supposed to be drawing for his homework over on its side as if he were trying to read a very complicated map.

"No…" said Jeremy, his head falling.

James sighed. Damn. This little Hufflepuff may be terrible with Transfiguration, but he was also remarkably… adorable. James was becoming more and more endeared to him by the minute, but he was doing a very, very good job of hiding it because Jeremy was under the impression that this much older, much more sophisticated looking student would rather be chucking cockroach shells than helping him with his homework. Jeremy didn't know that James was fulfilling his detention, so he was already in awe of the fact that he was spending any time with him in the first place. James, for his part, was surprised beyond belief that he didn't hate every minute of it. In fact – and he'd never admit this to McGonagall for fear that she'd find him something more loathsome to do – he was actually really _enjoying _his tutoring hours. This was nothing like trying to explain stuff to his friends; mostly because the first years, unlike his friends, were rapt with attention every time he opened his mouth.

"I was just trying to draw what it looked like," said Jeremy.

"What what looks like?" asked James. "We're talking theory, it doesn't – oh, hold on," James cut off when he heard a vibration coming from his book bag on the floor by to his feet.

He had charmed the magic mirrors he got for himself and Serious to vibrate when Sirius was trying to call him, so that people wouldn't turn their heads when they heard a voice shouting "James Potter! James Potter!" from inside his bag. From Jeremy's point of view, however, the whole thing was still very strange. He hadn't heard the very subtle vibration, so when the forth year suddenly broke off, opened his book bag, stuck his head inside and asked, "What's up?" Jeremy was more than a little concerned. "What do you mean, you're hungry? No, I can't. I'm busy…. Alright, just sit tight–"

Jeremy gave a little cough. He was beginning to think that the forth year had forgotten he was there.

James looked up from the bag momentarily and furrowed his brow at Jeremy before returning his attention to whoever or whatever was in his bag.

"I'll catch up with you later," he said. He closed his bag and sat back up straight. It seemed that Sirius and the others needed James to help them through one of the steps. It was taking a lot longer than it would have had James been there, and Sirius was getting cranky because he had anticipated being able to eat lunch far before now.

"So, where were we?" asked James. For some reason Jeremy looked slightly afraid of him.

He had met with two other students before this kid, and though it took them a few times to get the concept as well, it was taking Jeremy _forever_. Nothing that James had tried was making it any clearer in his mind. But that moment of understanding that he had achieved with those other two kids had somehow been so satisfying that he wasn't going to give up until Jeremy got there, too.

"You don't need to draw _quite_ so many pictures, I think," said James.

"I'm just trying to… trying to see it," said Jeremy.

James blinked. See what? Nothing visible came out of the wand when the spell was performed, and they were only working on the theory now, which had nothing to do with vis–

Ahhh, thought James.

He thought about it for a moment.

"Maybe if you thought about it like this," he said, and he began to draw a picture on the parchment, drawing out a curving horizon line and two circles for the sun and moon. When he was done he took out his wand and tapped it on the paper, making the circles come to life, rising and setting. Jeremy stared in wide-eyed awe as the circles moved and the parchment even blacked over with ink when the 'moon' rose, then cleared again when it sank, representing night and day. On a separate piece of parchment he drew a diagram of the earth, sun and moon from a more distant vantage point so that no matter how the planets revolved all three could always be seen. With this he began explaining to Jeremy the transfigurational concept that they were working on, using the solar system as a metaphor to visualize the concept. It seemed so simple to James now that he wondered why he hadn't thought of it before. He just needed a way to literally visualize the theories in order to make sense of them.

When James was through explaining the concept in that fashion to the best of his ability, it was time for Jeremy to go to his next class, so James didn't have a chance to find out if his help had really amounted to anything. Still, as he packed up his things to leave the library he felt pretty good about himself.

That is, until he ran into Lily on his way back to the common room.

He had heard her voice from around the corner. We'll, he'd heard her laughter.

"But who _are_ you going to go with?" said another voice.

James stopped just around the corner to listen.

"I don't see why I have to go with anybody," said Lily.

"_Because_ that Snape kid will be going, too, no doubt. And if you both go stag together people will want to say you're… you know… _dating!_ It _is _a Valentine's Day party, after all."

"Why would that be such a horrible thing?" asked Lily after a pause.

James made a face from where he stood unseen and told himself not to vomit.

"Why would it be a horrible thing to…? Ugh, I can't believe these words are coming out of my mouth in this order," said Denise.

Here here, thought James.

"Wait a minute," she continued, and suddenly her tone was serious. "You two _aren't _dating, are you?"

"What? Oh God no! Don't be silly!" said Lily, her tone conveying how ridiculous she found the idea before she could check herself. Severus was a friend, not a… oh, it was just too weird to even think about him in that way. She had only questioned Denise because she didn't like the tone of condemnation she was using against him.

"Ok, just checking."

"If you're so concerned for my well-being, why don't you come?"

"Because I have an _actual _date with someone that night," said Denise, and James could actually hear her beaming. "We're going to Madame Puddifoot's – you know, that adorable little tea place in Hogsmeade."

"Yeah, I know it," said Lily, the corners of her mouth twitching upwards. Madame Puddifoot's wouldn't exactly have been _her _choice for a first date, or _any_ date, for that matter. She wouldn't even bother asking Denise who her mystery lover was – more than likely he'd be old news by next Tuesday.

"You know, you could just skip Slug's party if you found yourself a date. We could double!"

"That sounds lovely," said Lily, though she would rather do a number of unpleasant things before going on a double date with Denise. "But Slughorn hinted he'd be introducing me to a colleague of his at the Ministry. He keeps handing me pamphlets about how they need more potioneers. I'm actually kind of excited," she added, and Denise rolled her eyes.

"Suit yourself. Are you off to the library, then?"

"Yeah, I've got tutoring."

"How long do you have to do this before McGonagall thinks you've done enough detention?"

"It's not for detention," said Lily "I finished up my sentence a while ago. But after hexing Avery I figured I should show some extra initiative if I still want to be considered for prefect next year."

"Still don't know why you want that position," said Denise. "And I had no idea you'd already finished serving detention. I heard Potter was still serving his."

"I might have Potter to thank for my service not being as long, actually," said Lily, and inwardly James smiled.

"Oooh, you should invite him! You two seem to get along together, and you went with him to one of Slug's parties last year."

"Potter and me? Get along? Since when, exactly? When have you ever heard us have a conversation that wasn't a competition or an argument?"

"Oh, I don't know. I suppose there's just something _about _they way you argue… at the very least it'll be entertaining for everyone else."

"Oh, well in that case I'll go and ask him straight away," said Lily, laughing. "See you later!"

James realized that Lily was walking down the corridor towards him, but he waited before rounding it to meet her lest it look like he'd been just around the corner when they'd been talking. He timed it perfectly so that he nearly bumped right into her as she passed.

"Evans," said James, sounding casual. "Nice running into you, as usual," he joked.

"Oh, stop, my stomach hurts I'm laughing so hard," said Lily with an eye roll. Though she had initially given a start, she thought she had successfully managed to hide her shock as she saw none other than Potter mere seconds after joking about inviting him to Slughorn's Valentine's Day party.

"Careful, Evans," said James. "You'll start a rainstorm with that dreary attitude."

Lily's only response was another eye roll.

Neither of them had brought up their last argument since it had happened. James was still perplexed by Lily's response to a comment of his that he couldn't even fully remember, and Lily was embarrassed that she had taken it so seriously herself. The next day James had simply gone back to treating Lily the way he normally would, as if nothing had happened, preferring this to avoiding her. And Lily usually wasn't one to hold a grudge or create drama where it needn't be made; and, though it seemed rather silly, it was nice to be able to have a certainty in her life. Something she could count on that would never change. If that thing happened to be a competitive relationship with James Potter, then so be it. Between her sister becoming more estranged from her, Severus flip-flopping about his loyalties to his Slytherin housemates, and her up-in-the-air chances at becoming a prefect next year, she supposed she should be grateful for the ever-bothersome James Potter. That said, the idea of changing the thoroughly grounded nature of their weird relationship by inviting him to attend a party as her date did not strike her as the best plan , no matter how much she entertained the idea in her head.

"I assume you're off to the library," said James, noting her books. Careful not to let the little first years get too attached to you," said James, as Lily continued on her way. "They tend to get clingy. Last thing you want is for one of them to expect an invitation from you to one of Slug's parties or something."

James mentally slapped himself. Was he being too obvious?

"I'll be sure to keep that in mind," said Lily suspiciously.

"Although, you and that Thompson fellow might do well together. You're about the same height."

To this, Lily finally turned around.

"He's tall for his age," she said, a bit cross. "And I'm average height."

"So they _did_ lower the national average! I thought I felt taller," said James. Well, it may not have been the nicest thing to say, but it did get her to turn around. Though he wasn't sure exactly what he meant to say to her once she did.

"I'm sure I'd feel taller too if my head were twice it's normal size," said Lily.

"Big brains like mine need a lot of room," said James. "So I suppose you _are _going to Slughorn's thing, then," he added, getting back to the topic he most wanted to discuss.

"What thing?" said Lily, pretending to be unawares.

James's eyes narrowed for a moment, but he quickly recovered.

"Slughorn's having a Valentine's Day party or something. Normally I wouldn't care, but he was really adamant about wanting me there. Something about me being a Quidditch star, I don't know…" he trailed off, raking his hand through his hair and glancing at Lily to look for any sign that she was impressed. If he wasn't mistaken, she was rolling her eyes again.

"I'm serious, Evans – one of these days your eye will roll straight out of your head and onto the floor. Anyway," he went on, "I was pretty surprised that he wanted me – Slug, I mean – seeing as it was his own house we won against."

"He's not as prejudiced as some people," said Lily, continuing her way to the library. "So I'm assuming that means you're not going?"

"What, me? No way. Wouldn't catch me dead." _What are you doing? _he thought to himself. "Do you really like what it's all about? Seemed awfully stuffy from what I saw."

"Well, unlike some people it's the only opportunity I get to do network with wizards outside the school."

James was silent for a moment. He hadn't considered that perhaps he took the whole affair for granted, having been introduced to that sort of lifestyle from birth.

"Alright, you have me there," he said, as bit more softly. He almost added a sorry, but apologizing wasn't really his strong suit.

They were now just outside the library doors.

"I thought you had your sessions at a different time," said Lily, thinking that the only reason James would have walked with her this far was because he, too, was on his way to the library.

"I don't _just _come to the library because I have detention," said James a bit defensively.

Lily raised an eyebrow.

"I _don't_," James asserted. "I probably know the library better than you do. Did you know there's a passageway behind–"

"Behind the third bookcase, second row down of the Biographical section? No, I had no idea until you graciously indulged me with your infinite knowledge, thank you so much."

James blinked in surprise, but then his face broke into a genuine smile, and Lily, despite herself, felt quite pleased.

"And how did you come to discover that?" he asked.

"Same way you did, I expect," she said. "Hiding from Filch when I found myself out past curfew."

"Close. Mrs. Norris."

"You were hiding from a cat?"

"That thing is not a cat," declared James.

"What is she, then?" asked Lily.

"The devil incarnate?" he suggested.

Lily grinned. For the moment, she had actually forgotten that she had a second year student waiting for her in the library.

"Strange to think of you hiding from Filch," said James.

"Well, I would hate to think my character's been sullied in your eyes," said Lily.

"Not at all. I like a little mischief in a person. It's healthy."

"Not in excess," said Lily, thinking of James's less restrained penchant for troublemaking.

"Ah, I was wondering where the criticism would come in," said James.

"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Lily, taken aback.

"Nothing at all," said James. "What do you mean by 'excess'?"

"Nothing, I don't know," said Lily, wondering how their conversation had yet again turned on its head so suddenly. "Why do you have to be so argumentative all the time?"

"I'm not like this all the time," said James. "_You _just bring it out in me."

"_Oh," _said Lily, her turn to be defensive_._ "Well I'm _so sorry_ to be so terrible to get along with!"

Truthfully, Lily was hurt by his last comment. She had certainly been more than confused about the nature of her relationship with James for the past few months; at times it was hard to tell whether their usual banter arose out of simple academic rivalry, as it had in the past, or if there was something more to it. More than once she'd caught herself being nearly flirtatious, but only at times when _his _behavior seemed to suggest the same. It wasn't until their argument after leaving McGonagall's office that Lily even considered the idea that the reason why James argued with her so much was because he actually found her disagreeable. She had dismissed the thought at first, but now here he was, telling her once again that he had a serious problem with her.

"That's not what I'm saying," said James, exasperated. Why does this keep happening? One second he was having a halfway normal conversation with Lily, and before he knew what had happened they were in the middle of yet another argument.

"Oh, of course! You meant that I bring out all your worst qualities in a _nice _way."

"'_Worst qualities?_'"

"Yes – even the great James Potter isn't completely flawless. I'm sorry to be the one to inform you."

"What do you mean '_wors_–"

"Hey, Lily, I almost forgot to ask… you… uhhhmm… Hi," stuttered Denise, who had turned around to find Lily at the library when she realized she'd forgotten to ask for her Herbology notes earlier.

Lily turned around, her face a bit red, which piqued Denise's interest.

"Everything… ship shape?" she asked.

"Yes, just peachy. You forgot to ask me what?" said Lily, accidently speaking as sharply to Denise as she had been to Potter.

Denise paused before she answered, looking from Lily to James.

Lily caught this, turned her head over her shoulder, gave James a curt once over and asked in a somewhat hostile tone,

"Was there something else you needed, Potter?"

Surprisingly, James spoke right away. But not to Lily.

"Denny, are you going to the Saint Mungo's Trustee Ball over holiday?" he asked her, all politeness. James knew that her aunt was on the board. He had his hands draped casually in his pockets and he looked remarkably at ease for having been arguing with Lily just a moment ago.

"Oh, I don't know," said Denise, twirling a finger in her hair and batting her eyelashes a bit more than necessary. "Why, are you going?"

"Of course. My dad was on the board for years."

"Oh, well then I'll definitely go! I mean – that is – I can see if I'm possibly able to maybe come for a little while," she shrugged coquettishly, suddenly trying to act aloof.

"Great. It's a date," said James, and Lily, surprised by how incensed she was by this, spoke out at once.

"I thought you were already seeing someone, Den?" she asked her, finding herself hoping that Denise would cancel her 'date' with Potter once she was reminded of this fact.

Denise shrugged it off.

"Oh, that'll be over in a week or two. Well before the party!"

"Wonderful, then I'll see you there," said James with a smile. And without a single glance at Lily he turned on his heel and walked off.

Later in the common room Sirius is telling James that he heard from Sydney that James had asked Denise to, in his words, "a freaking ball."

"I was just asking if I'd see her there, is all," said James.

"Syd said you'd said it was a date," said Sirius, confused.

"Ah, yeah, well, that was… I was sort of…" he trailed off, not quite sure how to say, _I only did that to spite someone else_, without sounding like a complete prick. "Why are you interested anyway?"

"Just didn't think you liked her, is all. Thought you had – er – _other_ preferences."

"You should come, too," said James, pretending that he hadn't heard Sirius. "I promised my parents I'd go and it'd be more fun with you there. I wasn't really planning on spending the whole time with Denise."

"You're a model of gentlemanly behavior, you are," said Sirius.

"So you come and help keep her off my – I mean, keep her company, too. I hate being stuck at those things by myself."

"Don't you usually entertain yourself by… what did you do last year again? Blow up the punch bowl? Tell naughty jokes to the Home Secretary's wife?"

"My, you've an interesting memory. It was nothing that dramatic. I just joked around with some of the more well-humored board members was all. And I didn't _blow up _the punchbowl, I _spiked _it," he explained, as if this was a great improvement to the other story. "I doubt this year will be at all the same, though, given all that's happened to Saint Mungo's in the past year."

"I'm surprised they're even having a benefit ball this year."

"I'm not. What with all that's going on, it isn't a wonder Nostrum wants to make it all look like business as usual. That's what mum says, at least. She's even more upset about the changes there than dad is. Dad's hinted that he's worried she'll start something at the ball – rile up someone important or something."

"I wouldn't be surprised. I like that about mum; never afraid to speak her mind."

"What did you just say?"

"What? I meant that as a compliment!"

"No, I just – it sounded like you called her… never mind," James trailed off.

Sirius, embarrassed because he realized exactly the mistake he had just made and why, quickly changed the subject.

"Err, so, err… So, while I'm off 'entertaining' Denise in some dark, romantic corner of the–"

"Knowing you, you're probably referring to a closet."

"Room – shut up – who will you be enjoying the evening with? The ever-elusive Lily Evans, perhaps?" Sirius batted his eyelashes mockingly.

Of course, it was at that moment that Lily walked through the passage into the Gryffindor Common Room after finishing up her last tutoring session and grabbing something to eat from the Great Hall. And is was this response that she heard from where she stood unseen on her way up to the girls dorm:

"Yeah, right," said James, still resentful of the way things had ended yet again with Lily and eager to let off steam even if it came out in the form of lies. "We wouldn't be caught dead at a party together." James, of course, was referring to the fact that Lily would probably never agree to go out with _him_, but Lily took this declaration, and the bitterness behind it, in exactly the opposite way. She continued on her way to the girl's dorm, careful to remain unseen – not because she didn't want Potter to know that she'd heard him, but because she was too proud to let anyone see her cry.

The next morning, at breakfast, James was less concerned about what had happened yesterday between him and Lily. He, of course, didn't know that she has overheard the comment he had made to Sirius last night. He knew that he'd probably completely sabotaged any chance at going to Slughorn's party with Lily, but it seemed that he simply enjoyed torturing himself because he kept thinking back to their time together at last year's party. Though they had only gone together for Machiavellian reasons, he had actually really enjoyed being around her. She had danced without giving a care in the world to what she looked like, she wasn't afraid to be silly when the mood turned a little too drab for her liking, and she went out of her way to make sure the people around her felt comfortable and were having a good time. James truly admired Lily for all that she was and that fact that she rarely seemed to give a thought to herself or what anyone thought of her.

Having drifted deeper and deeper into thoughts of her, James was unaware that he had settled his gaze directly on Lily, who was nibbling on some toast a ways down the Gryffindor table. Sirius did notice, and couldn't resist commenting.

"Merlin's sake, just _ask _her already!"

"What?" said James, snapping out of his reverie.

"Evans, duh," said Sirius, thoroughly frustrated. "It's obvious you fancy her."

"I – wha – no! I don't – what are you–" James spluttered.

"Oh, come off it," Sirius cut him off. To hell with what James had said last night. He was thoroughly lost as to why his best mate, who was normally so straightforward and unabashed, would be _embarrassed_ about a school crush. If he knew that James thought Lily wasn't actually interested in him, the whole thing might have made more sense; he would then quickly inform James that he was blind if he didn't see that she liked him, and that would be that. Unfortunately, he had no reason to believe that James was actually afraid of being officially rejected by Lily, so he had no constructive advise to offer his friend. "Oy, Evans!" Sirius shouted over the table.

"_What are you doing?" _hissed James, trying and failing to grab Sirius's waving arm from across the table.

Lily stopped laughing at what Denise's impression of Paul Bloom's somewhat inappropriate reaction to the cheering charms they were practicing the day before. She peered over at Sirius, who continued to talk to her over the entire table.

"Heard you were looking to upgrade your date to Slug's party," he said. "Bet you wouldn't mind going with Gryffindor's star Quidditch player, wouldn't you?"

While across from her Denise's eyes grew round with surprise, Lily suddenly felt her ears turning red and hot. It wasn't enough that James had made a fool out of her last night – but now he was actually involving his _friends_ in the joke. And now Black was going to involve the whole of Gryffindor tower! They were actually making a joke of asking her out. Ok, fine, she thought. Two can play at this game.

"Oh, well yes," she began innocently, and for one brief moment James was flabbergasted. "But I think Martha already has a date."

This got quite a few laughs from around the table. James, afraid of being caught in a vulnerable situation, laughed along to make it seem like he could care less about what was happening. This, of course, only confirmed Lily's suspicion that he and Black were having a laugh at her expense.

"Tragic," said Sirius. "But I was actually referring to our center chaser."

"I thought you said I should be looking for an improvement," said Lily coolly, too incensed to care that she was falling below her standard of tactfulness.

To this, several people _Ooooo-ed_, though they were still thoroughly enjoying the show.

James would, of course, have to speak up for himself now.

"Leave her alone, Sirius," he said, and for a second Lily was both surprised by and thankful for his intervention. But then he continued. "She would hate for anyone to find out that she actually _enjoys _my company. Tell you what, Evans – I'll do you a favor. I _will _let you go out with me. Just once, mind you! Don't get greedy! I know you've been wishing it would happen and I'm finally taking pity."

Several more people were laughing now.

James knew he wasn't exactly improving things with Lily, but at the moment he couldn't think of a better way to save face in front of the whole school other than by pretending that the whole thing was a big joke between them.

_Un-fucking-believable_, thought Lily.

"Oh, thanks so much for your concern, Potter," Lily said. "Tell you what? How about tonight you come up to the Astronomy tower," (this earned her several catcalls from the crowd), "and I'll meet you at the bottom."

"Ouch," said Sirius as the table Ooooo-ed once more.

"I'm know I'm a catch, Evans, but there's no need to throw yourself off a tower for me!" retorted James, but Lily was already getting up from the table with Denise and Mary, the latter girls too taken aback by the whole exchange to comment. Lily didn't look back at James as she left the Great Hall, but Denise wiggled her fingers at him over her shoulder as she followed her.

"Merlin," said Sirius, sitting down. "Did _not_ see that coming, mate. Really sorry. What's wrong with you?" he added.

"Gee, I dunno," retorted James under his breath. "Maybe the fact that you just made an arse out of me at eight in the morning."

"Not you – _you_," said Sirius, nodding at Remus, who was looking down at his toast and didn't appear to have been the least bit amused by what had just happened.

"Nothing, just…" he turned to James with an apologetic look on his face. "I was gonna tell you… I didn't think… if I'd known…"

"For Godric's sake, _what?_" said James impatiently.

"Lily and I are going to Slughorn's party together," said Remus.

James, having had a lot of practice over the years at deceiving people in order to get out of trouble, and not wanting to hurt one of his closest friends, hid how unsavory he found this information from Remus.

"Why are you looking at me like that's a bad thing?" said James. "Good. I'm glad. Since when?" he couldn't help but add.

"We ran into each other last night. We figured it would be fun–"

"If a Slug Club party is your idea of a good time then we need to take you out more often," said James. "But honestly, you're looking at me like you've just accidently killed somebody. If your eyes get any rounder someone might mistake you for an owl."

"I wonder why she didn't mention it, though," said Remus after a pause, cutting into his eggs rather dejectedly.

"Because we were only _joking_," asserted James. _So who exactly are you lying to now? _a voice inside of his head asked.

"So it's just gonna be a running joke with you two now?" asked Sirius, thoroughly confused. "'Oy, Evans, wanna go out?' 'Ew, no way! Cooties!'" he mocked, doing his best (which consequently was a very poor) impression of James and Lily, respectively. "Yeah, sounds hilarious. You two should perform stand-up, you're a riot," he said, sarcasm dripping from every word.

The most mature response James could think of was to throw a piece of toast at Sirius's forehead.

"Oof – ok, cut it out!" said Sirius when a second object fell on his head.

"That wasn't me," said James. "You've got a letter."

"Sure enough, Sirius looked up to see a vaguely familiar owl soaring away from his head after having just dropped a letter onto it.

"It's from Andy," he said, after reading the front. He eagerly tore open the envelope. It wasn't often that Sirius got mail from anyone besides James's parents and _Wizard Rock_ magazine.

As he was reading the letter a look of disgust suddenly appeared on his face.

"What?" Peter asked, having just shown up at the table to greet them.

"_Nymphadora?"_ Sirius said to himself.

"Nymphawhat?" repeated James.

"Ok, so the good news is that Andy finally had her baby and now she's not fat as a bloated banshee," said Sirius, looking up.

"She was _pregnant_, Sirius" said Remus.

"Her words, not mine," said Sirius. "The bad news is that she named the poor girl _Nymphadora._"

"Why?" asked Peter, sounding as if he were asking why someone had decided to put down their pet.

"Says she always wanted to name her first kid after one of the Black family's most infamous blood traitors," said Sirius. He sighed, folding up the letter. "I tell you, it's like my family enjoys giving their kids the most stupid names."

"You don't say?" said James sarcastically, still feeling some residual resentment for Sirius's ill-conceived attempt to get he and Lily on a date together.

"Yeah," sighed Sirius, missing the taunt completely. "Oh, almost forgot. She wants a visit sometime."

"Yeah?" said James, suddenly feeling a bit more cheery.

"Yeah," said Sirius. "She says she wants to know now Narcissa's doing."

"She's _her _sister," said Peter.

"Yeah, but she's been shunned from the family, and I haven't yet," explained Sirius.

"Are you planning on it?" asked Remus.

"Well, I mean it's not like I've set a date, but of course you're all invited to the party when the day comes."

"Why Narcissa specifically?" asked James.

"Dunno, do I?" shrugged Sirius. "Not that I'd know anything to begin with."

Fortunately, this seemed to be enough to appease their curiosity, for Sirius was lying. He knew exactly why Andromeda would be wondering how her younger sister was doing, though she hadn't said anything specific herself. He felt the same way about Regulus. He never had the courage to show it, but despite the distance he felt between him and his brother, he couldn't help but feel like a failure for not being strong enough to steer him away from the brainwashing doctrine of their family. Inwardly he was debating whether or not to tell Andromeda that Narcissa was dating Lucius Malfoy, who was said to have a pretty firm footing in the rumored Dark Rising.

He found his gaze drifting over to the Slytherin table, searching for Regulus among the crowd. He didn't see him, and he was more than a little surprised when he found himself disappointed by this. But then an idea occurred to him.

"You know," he said to James, "We haven't used that cloak of yours in a while."

"What are you thinking?" asked James eagerly, knowing exactly which cloak Sirius was referring to.

"I'm thinking that, coincidentally, we also haven't pulled a prank on the Slytherins in a while, either."

"You're serious?" asked Remus. "James is _still_ serving detention for the last fight he got into with them!"

"And I am just _dying_ to get back at them for that," said James, and Remus rolled his eyes.

Just then, however, Professor Slughorn was making his way past the Gryffindor table on his way out of the Great Hall.

"Well talk it through tonight, after supper," said Sirius in an undertone. "I'm thinking we'll kill two birds with one stone."

"What do you mean?" asked Peter.

"You'll see," was all he said.


End file.
